Morrowind confessions

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raevol
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by raevol »

GreyFox wrote:I really hated the Dunmer playing the game back in the days. Those arrogant, xenophobic, slave trading, backwater underdeveloped deadra worshiping religious fanatics made me always side with the imperials and their factions. I smiled when I read what happened to them after Oblivion. (I never played Skyrim and I probably never will)
Oof, that's rough! Though can't say I blame you, I hated them too. I've come to see them as more "nuanced" now though. There's pleny of bad dunmer, but there's some good ones too.

And I never really liked the Imperials...
Chris
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by Chris »

raevol wrote:Oof, that's rough! Though can't say I blame you, I hated them too. I've come to see them as more "nuanced" now though. There's pleny of bad dunmer, but there's some good ones too.
For me, it's less about 'good Dunmer' and 'bad Dunmer', and more that Dunmer society and their general outlook is just not interesting to me, and as such doesn't make up for their poor attitude. Sure there are 'good Dunmer', but that's because they're the least Dunmer-like. I don't care for D&D's Dark Elves either for similar reasons, which makes sense given their similarities.

My Morrowind confession: I actually like Morrowind the least out of the main series (excluding Arena, which I've never played). Not to say it's a bad game or that I don't like it at all or anything, I do have fun playing it, but the static-ness of the world is a glaring issue that's constantly nagging at me while I play, compared to Daggerfall before it and Oblivion after it, both of which did a much better job of making the world feel more lively outside of what I'm doing. Plus I find Morrowind's UI and general dialog system to be pretty poor (not that the other games are that much better in their vanilla state, but the later games at least have mods that improve the UI).
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DestinedToDie
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by DestinedToDie »

Dunmers getting a lot of hate. For all the generic high fantasy themes I feel like Bethesda managed to pull off dark elves in the most original way I`ve so far seen. They might not be like-able, but perhaps the developers intended to make you dislike them.
Chris
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by Chris »

DestinedToDie wrote:They might not be like-able, but perhaps the developers intended to make you dislike them.
That's probably the case, in which case they succeeded. :P
Ferik
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by Ferik »

I've always liked the Dunmer actually. I liked the varied architecture and strange culture they've eked out for themselves in such a dangerous land. I think the parts that make them seem dickish were more to force home the fact that they're so alien from anything in the real world. They're not just a different culture, they're an entirely different species with a wholly distinct theology where the Gods literally live among them from a land torn asunder by demonic ruins.

I know it's a small thing but I love the fact that there are Dunmer and Imperial variants of a lot of the more basic spells with relatively minute differences, and the Dunmer ones are named after the Tribunal. It really plays into the whole foreign culture aspect in that even their fundamental magic spells are different despite being used for the same purposes. I'm sure them being removed was for the purpose of redundancy in the later games, but I like to imagine it's to show how Imperialism can be quite destructive to cultures even with the best of intentions.
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GreyFox
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by GreyFox »

raevol wrote: Oof, that's rough! Though can't say I blame you, I hated them too. I've come to see them as more "nuanced" now though. There's pleny of bad dunmer, but there's some good ones too.
And I never really liked the Imperials...
I don't say MW did not a good Job of describing and portraying a foreign culture, that was done very good actually and it was all impressively immersive. As Chris states:
For me, it's less about 'good Dunmer' and 'bad Dunmer', and more that Dunmer society and their general outlook is just not interesting to me, and as such doesn't make up for their poor attitude
Exactly. It is not even the "dark" elements of Dunmer society but more their nationalistic self praising attitude which reminds me of people in real life who are like that.
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raevol
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by raevol »

Right right, maybe I simplified what I was saying in my post, but I agree with you guys. :)
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silentthief
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by silentthief »

GreyFox wrote: Exactly. It is not even the "dark" elements of Dunmer society but more their nationalistic self praising attitude which reminds me of people in real life who are like that.
I enjoyed that, it was a kind of "stranger in a strange land" feel. Plus it always seemed to cause me to respond violently. For example, the generic ordinator greeting "we're watching you, scum" would inspire me to grab one of thier armor sets, so that they would attack me, and I could kill them without a bounty

Two of my confessions, both when playing on xbox before having access to the CS:

1: wandered around for hours and finally went into a new cave that I had not explored before. went deep into this, and them met and killed a guy called "crazy batu" and got the message that I doomed the game, so ended the game and went back to previous save losing all that gameplay. Wasn't till I got online that I found out that it doesn't matter to kill him.

2: had found through exploration, not through quest; a "6th house cup" -- and I put it down somewhere thinking that it might cause some kind of issues (cursed???) lost it, and found out later that that was a quest item


ST previously cursed by xbox
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lysol
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by lysol »

I did enjoy that they took a cliché in storytelling: Evil imperialistic conquerors vs good peace loving native living people, but with a huge twist: The natives are xenophobic assholes, and the imperials are kind of good, at least if you compare to the dunmer. I really like this twist, it makes the story more realistic somehow.

I hate the movie Avatar for this reason. It's dumbed down simplistic garbage with characters that are 100% good or 100% evil. Morrwind is not at all like this.

EDIT: Just wanted to say, I read through this discussion quite fast, so sorry if it sounds like I haven't read the thread very well, cause... I haven't. :P
Antsan
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Re: Morrowind confessions

Post by Antsan »

The first time I started playing Morrowind I thought there was no main quest. I totally missed that this imperial was telling me to see Cosades in Balmora. I had plenty of fun running around and doing random quests.
I never finished the main quest either.

For a long time I was also way more interested in the UESP than in any of the games. The games do pretty poorly in presenting how awesome the world actually is, I think.
GreyFox wrote:I really hated the Dunmer playing the game back in the days. Those arrogant, xenophobic, slave trading, backwater underdeveloped deadra worshiping religious fanatics made me always side with the imperials and their factions. I smiled when I read what happened to them after Oblivion. (I never played Skyrim and I probably never will)
Hmmm, I see why people are averse to the later TES games, but I'd recommend Skyrim. The main quest isn't really that good, but some of the Daedric ones are really damn awesome and there's some mods (Civil War Overhaul, Immersive Patrols, Frostfall, Hunterborn, there are probably tons more I've forgotten right now) that turn it more into the simulation that I think TES games should be. Of course it still misses the most important part of metaphysics simulation, but, you know…
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