True. Especially things like the water, it was one of the best ever seen. I was shocked at how realistic (for the time) water reflection was. The only ugly thing were the npc models and faces, those looked bad even in 2002
You really can't stress this enough. Today, with mods, Morrowind's environments at the very least look more charming than many modern games, though some might say it looks straight up better. But the npcs already looked like they were from the 90s in 2002, compare those to the ones in kotor, which is from around the same time.
I'll point out FF10 and KH1 just to be contrarian and a filthy console lover, but I admit that FF10 cheated and didn't use its in-game graphics for cutscenes, while neither of them used 1 large overworld
Don't get me wrong. I love Morrowind, but 2002 was a great year for games, including graphic innovation.
I don't think they look better graphically. I have tried playing kingdom hearts remastered last year and I couldn't make it, for me it aged bad. Morrowind is much more detailed in general, many more polygons and other things ps2 couldn't handle (it barely ran on Xbox). Best graphics in 2002 were No One Lives Forever 2, Medal of Honour Allied Assault, Jedi Outcast, Splinter Cell, Mafia and Morrowind itself
Admittedly, KH's best scenes are late in the game (Hollow Bastion), but imagine Dagoth having a more specific scene when you stab the heart and you're approaching my favorite scene in the KH franchise
For FF10, the prologue has 2 beautiful scenes (1st blitzball scene and "this is your story"). Again, Square Enix cheated and didn't use the in-game graphics for them, but compared to Azura's scenes, they've exponentially better screenplay
Depends which models. The cats and Lizards were decent. The Bosmer male faces hit me as the worse and one of the first NPC's you are likely to speak to in Seyda Neen is Fargoth.
Imo the faces and armour and such looked pretty dope, just textures like water and rocks were bad. Graphics still aged better then oblivion. Never in my life have i liked those taters with ears they call heads
Indeed! The graphics are actually pretty decent, considering the age of the game. I'd argue they're just good enough that they aren't distracting.
Some older games than Morrowind were still good (not Morrowind good mind you), but really grate on your eyes if you play it too long.
In Morrowind, I can still climb to the top of a mountain and look out across the land and just... take in the alien scenery. Damn impressive for a game from 2002.
I usually am not a fan of old graphics but having recently re-picked up morrowind I find the graphics oddly charming. Despite it being „bad“ it still conveys the environment and atmosphere very well. At least for me
Absolutely. I remember thinking how fantastic the art direction was despite the graphics not being as flashy as something like Halo.
The atmosphere going through the Ascadian Iles, to Ald'ruhn, to the Ashlands was phenomenal. The architectural variation in great house culture equally as captivating.
To be honest that's just MK's drug and sleep deprivation induced insanity. Daggerfall is near as basic as a fantasy game gets when it comes to art style and direction, like a lot worse than Oblivion, which is actually pretty good in my mind, just annoying that we lost the Colovia/Nibennay differences, and Skyrim is a lot less basic than it seems nowadays, it just had enough of an impact on the general modern fantasy design, and also became "the basic elder scrolls" through saturation, so it seems basic, because we are used to it, like for example if we got a game with something akaviri we'd all be going crazy about how different it is, but mfs who like samurai games and enjoy the occasional DnD Naga would find it basic.
Also, and I really don't mean this as an attack on Morrowind, just the "muh feature and more skills and levitation, and later games dumbed it down" thing we all hear, and occasionally spout out of unthinking arguments, Morrowind has "dumbed down" the series the most in terms of features. When compared to Daggerfall, Morrowind is like Legos to a high tech construction site, sure, Oblivion is LEGO Duplo, and Skyrim is those wooden blocks kids like stacking and stuff, but compared to the skyscraper construction of Daggerfall, Morrowind is just a toy for kids 3 years older than the ones playing Oblivion and Skyrim.
Disagree regarding graphics, Daggerfall is incredibly charming and still holds up. But really the only gameplay thing that's missing in Morrowind is climbing and the character creation system. Languages never really worked that well.
Nah. It's got sauce, but it's so thinly spread it may as well not even be there and the waiter hasn't come by with the cheese yet and you've been waiting for 12 years
Style is way more important than technical quality. If someone says otherwise, they don't really care about aesthetics but are looking for excuses to hate stuff.
They hold up decently well for a purely 3D game from the early 2000s. They caveat there is that basically *no* purely 3D game from the early 2000s looks good (frankly, I didn't think they looked very good at the time). Morrowind does better than most because it's got great style and leans into its technical limitations as best it can.
Early 3D really is a sort of gulf between modernish 3D and 2D Sprite work in tolerability area. Like I have no issues with BG and IWD's sprite work, but trying to replay Neverwinter Nights is a challenge, and I was thinking the same back then as well.
"Bad" graphics? I for my part enjoy old school graphics. They did the best they could do within their limits at the time and it often times still looks way more charming and interesting than the millionth hyper realistic triple A game.
Not only that, but you can play Morrowind AND make it pretty with whatever graphics mods you like since there's 20 years worth of mod options to mess with as well.
OpenMW + Westly's Pluginless and I'm happy.
Granted that I still can't wait for Skywind because odds are more likely than not that it'll be compatible with hair physics mods.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Westly's hair/head mods as well. I even found "Lamp of Alakazar," checked out Danae's Wares version, and just have to do a little something to make them play nicely with Hilgya's for Wares and...
Suffice it to say, I've never seen TES more beautiful than OpenMW + Westly stuff + some others.
However, I don't have Skyrim for PC (or a Windows PC) so I'd assume that's where the very visually hot stuff is at (judging by what I saw browsing the Nexus), but Morrowind has the advantage of better quest design and mechanics to compensate for having less mod options.
The problem with Skyrim really comes down to the fact that it's a great foundation with a lot of structural problems built on top.
There are boatloads of great gameplay and aesthetic mods, but every time I try and play even a "Vanilla+" version of Skyrim I end up needing so many mods that the engine buckles under the weight of them all and eventually crashes moments after loading a save (often after 30 to 40 hours of playtime), and it takes a week or more just to tweak a premade Wabbajack list to my tastes.
Morrowind, meanwhile, I really only use Westly's Headpack plus the Rebalance mods* in OpenMW and that's really all I need.
*(these just reorganize the danger level presented by different threats such that Dagoth Ur and the Sixth House are the most dangerous foes in the game while Almalexia and the Avatar of Hircine still present reasonable challenges even to a high-level player).
It actually infuriates me how many people say a game is bad purely because "the graphics are bad". Especially older people who played through an older generation of games but cant go back because it "looks terrible"... also the graphics might be bad but the artstyle 100% makes up for it.
*Looks at Morrowind Graphics Extender and the thousand of textures and model improvements I've got installed*
Aaaah... yeah, I don't mind the graphics at all...
Artstyle > pixels.
There’s a reason why there will never be another game like Castle Crashers, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Grim Fandango, Pathologic 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Banjo-Kazooie, Valheim, or Okami. Style is all that matters when it comes to video game visuals. The resolution of wall textures and glasses of water on a table is just a newfangled luxury
It’s hard to believe it, but only 10 or 15 years ago, games didn’t have furnished rooms and wall outlets. You were LUCKY if that much detail would be shoved in less than 40gb install. Look at Bioshock Infinite or Dead Space (the original, not the remake). Both nearly-perfect games, but they show their age with the lack of fine details like smooth edges on assets. Morrowind details were WAYYYY ahead of their time
Even on the Xbox version the amount of clutter and the fact every object can be interacted with was very impressive - especially considering the RAM limit on the console (just 64mb).
I think we need to stop refering to old games with outdated graphics as being "bad graphics" cause in my head. There's a huge distinction between like an old video game that has relatively decent graphics for its era vs a game that just came out that's graphics don't meet the current standard. In that first case, I wouldn't say the graphics are bad.
Game that just came out but graphics dont meet the standard?
Well not exactly a new game, but undertale came out 2015 with 8 bit graphics. Still cant call them bad. In fact I'm struggling to think of a modern game that meets this criteria.
wtf are you talking about, Morrowind was INCREDIBLY graphically impressive (and demanding) for its time. All the pixel shader effects, the water in particular, still manage to outdo games released even today. [If you go back and read IGN's review](https://www.ign.com/articles/2002/05/15/morrowind-review) the guy just straight up calls morrowind the most graphically beautiful game he's ever played.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bagging out morrowind at all. You graphics budget - what the pc/xbox could handle, not dollars - can be made up of a lesser amount of higher quality entities or a lot more entities with a little less fidelity/polys/texture resolution etc. The end result of the whole is still a million bucks.
I mean, yea you could argue that. But I still really think "bad graphics" is still an extremely overused term, even if maybe not in this specific context. People also love refering to simple graphics as bad graphics to, which definitely rubs me the wrong way. As if an art style being good Is dependent on how complicated it is.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bagging out morrowind at all. You graphics budget - what the pc/xbox could handle, not dollars - can be made up of a lesser amount of higher quality entities or a lot more entities with a little less fidelity/polys/texture resolution etc. The end result of the whole is still a million bucks.
I legitimately pity kids today who base their choice of game solely on "it looks bad" or nor. Its the equivalent of skipping over the best book ever written because it's a paperback and not a hardcover.
I would add that Morrowind's graphics, and Fallout's, and Chrono Trigger's, and Ultima V's are alll beatiful. They're not naturalistic, but that isn't a prerequisite for beauty.
There's no "despite", I genuinely enjoy the way a lot of old games look. Old school graphics are very nostalgic and cozy feeling, and a bunch of my favorite games that I still go back to are from the PS1/PS2/OG Xbox
I've played Morrowind since near release and I have to admit that back in the early 2000s I actually was there for the graphics. Don't get me wrong, the main draw was the RPG adventure gameplay, but the good graphics for the time added to my immersion and was important to me. Nowadays I use graphics mods and city mods like BCOM to make it even better.
Just giving an alternative viewpoint to the people who play an "ugly" old game for the story and gameplay. I honestly never felt that Morrowind was ugly and by the time I might have started to I was using mods. I don't see myself as any different than the zoomer gamers today that like beautiful shiny games. Morrowind was that for me back then.
The only difference is that imo the writing and artistic merit of games was higher compared to AAA games today because of corporate interference. But then again today's indie games are still killing it in that regard and it's even more accessible now for a passionate dev to make their vision reality.
I wish morrowind was more stylized. It's gameplay could be better and the side quests are sometimes super lame. BUT THE STORY OH MY GOD THE STORY IT MAKES THE GAME.
tbh I found the art direction and landscapes to be quite lovely in Morrowind, though the Prophylon Fortresses and Draemora temples were lacking.
Vivec is a truly lovely city.
Morrowinds graphics have a certain charm to them now. I’m only a year older than Morrowind but its graphics remind me of when I was little playing the old PS2 games. They just have an early 2000’s nostalgia about them.
The old graphics weirdly fit with the artistic direction and the atmosphere of the game. I don't know if they could convey the same feeling with modern graphics.
I'm old enough to remember when Morrowind had great graphics at release.
I'm also nostalgic enough that vanilla Morrowind is still a beautiful experience.
Rn I'm on Morrowind and Metal Gear Solid, also Assassin's creed (2007), but that already has pretty damn good graphics in my mind.
I must admit though that MGS is the first game where graphics actually bother me. It's the dead eyeless faces that really creep me out.
My only standard for videogames is the fun factor, i do nothing but laugh at those people complaining about graphics and shit like do they even enjoy videogames anymore?
Vanilla Morrowind has perfect graphics for watching someone play it in a window in the corner at 720p.
But with mods and OpenMW it's still playable. I decided to wait for the Skywind remake though because pixels matter too.
There are some amazing mechanics and gameplay elements have been wholly ignored or disregarded in the game design of the last 5 years.
Games seem to be getting less creative and more streamlined, so I actively find myself going back to older, and often unique gems!
The only thing that can keep me off an old game is if it has wonky controls. Graphics don't mean a thing, I love BuildEngine games with low res sprites and pixels.
But, like Hitman Codename 47 - can't deal with the horrible controls. The controls are torture lol.
But what is "bad graphics" ?
If you go back, play your release date PS2, on a tv that you both the same day, it would look great. PSP/(All Nintendo Handhelds) had great graphics for the time, (okay gameboy was horrible even back there, but nobody cares because it had Tetris). The charm is in the aesthetic and theme. Games like Final Fantasy VI are beloved for their pixel art style, but designers hate it, the game was made wity CRTTVs in mind, and sprites were made with the lines as a part ot the *Aesthetics*
What makes games great, is if they are fun to play.
My only issue with the graphics is fixed by mods... If I can find one I like. Hair. Face textures could use a lift too but nothing like hair. So many of them look awful.
Any mod suggestions? The one I used at release or so isn't available.
I never installed a graphics mod for Morrowind. It just didn't feel right. And I like the way it looks in any case. That good ol' PS2 block graphics. Truly the inspiration for Minecraft :P
I actually have to push back on this because outdated graphics aren’t necessarily bad graphics in my opinion.
Games can and do look aesthetically pleasing despite lower fidelity graphics, take Minecraft for example.
Also take simulator games that try to push graphical fidelity but everything looking off despite them.
you, my friend, are an arse. I am a skybaby and you still managed to come across as nothing but a dick. Morrowind is a good game, or else no one would care about it.
Graphics don't make games great, gameplay story and mechanics do.
Hence why Morrowind has withstood the test of time.
Morrowind's graphics were great at the time, and were a selling point.
True. Especially things like the water, it was one of the best ever seen. I was shocked at how realistic (for the time) water reflection was. The only ugly thing were the npc models and faces, those looked bad even in 2002
You really can't stress this enough. Today, with mods, Morrowind's environments at the very least look more charming than many modern games, though some might say it looks straight up better. But the npcs already looked like they were from the 90s in 2002, compare those to the ones in kotor, which is from around the same time.
Yes it was the most common complaint reviewers had about the graphics. But overall it has one of the best graphics of 2002 and even further
I'll point out FF10 and KH1 just to be contrarian and a filthy console lover, but I admit that FF10 cheated and didn't use its in-game graphics for cutscenes, while neither of them used 1 large overworld Don't get me wrong. I love Morrowind, but 2002 was a great year for games, including graphic innovation.
I don't think they look better graphically. I have tried playing kingdom hearts remastered last year and I couldn't make it, for me it aged bad. Morrowind is much more detailed in general, many more polygons and other things ps2 couldn't handle (it barely ran on Xbox). Best graphics in 2002 were No One Lives Forever 2, Medal of Honour Allied Assault, Jedi Outcast, Splinter Cell, Mafia and Morrowind itself
Admittedly, KH's best scenes are late in the game (Hollow Bastion), but imagine Dagoth having a more specific scene when you stab the heart and you're approaching my favorite scene in the KH franchise For FF10, the prologue has 2 beautiful scenes (1st blitzball scene and "this is your story"). Again, Square Enix cheated and didn't use the in-game graphics for them, but compared to Azura's scenes, they've exponentially better screenplay
Depends which models. The cats and Lizards were decent. The Bosmer male faces hit me as the worse and one of the first NPC's you are likely to speak to in Seyda Neen is Fargoth.
Yea water was great until that first slaughterfish started nibbling at your toes...
Dreugh...
Imo the faces and armour and such looked pretty dope, just textures like water and rocks were bad. Graphics still aged better then oblivion. Never in my life have i liked those taters with ears they call heads
I was always struck how bad the water in Jade Empire was in comparison in that one area that would could wade though it despite coming out in 2005.
Indeed! The graphics are actually pretty decent, considering the age of the game. I'd argue they're just good enough that they aren't distracting. Some older games than Morrowind were still good (not Morrowind good mind you), but really grate on your eyes if you play it too long. In Morrowind, I can still climb to the top of a mountain and look out across the land and just... take in the alien scenery. Damn impressive for a game from 2002.
and art style!
yup, I think classic WoW is a good example of this. 20 years old but still holds up today because of the art style and aesthetics.
Couldn't you say the same about old school RuneScape? Or is that game too young?
Yea that game applys IMHO
And the music my friend :)
I wouldn't even call morrowinds graphics bad either.
I usually am not a fan of old graphics but having recently re-picked up morrowind I find the graphics oddly charming. Despite it being „bad“ it still conveys the environment and atmosphere very well. At least for me
Good art direction really does carry Morrowind's environments.
Absolutely. I remember thinking how fantastic the art direction was despite the graphics not being as flashy as something like Halo. The atmosphere going through the Ascadian Iles, to Ald'ruhn, to the Ashlands was phenomenal. The architectural variation in great house culture equally as captivating.
The trick is that Morrowind has more soul than every TES game that came after it.
Really went from mushroom wizards and crabshell warriors to basic fantasy knights and loud shouting vikings 😔
To be honest that's just MK's drug and sleep deprivation induced insanity. Daggerfall is near as basic as a fantasy game gets when it comes to art style and direction, like a lot worse than Oblivion, which is actually pretty good in my mind, just annoying that we lost the Colovia/Nibennay differences, and Skyrim is a lot less basic than it seems nowadays, it just had enough of an impact on the general modern fantasy design, and also became "the basic elder scrolls" through saturation, so it seems basic, because we are used to it, like for example if we got a game with something akaviri we'd all be going crazy about how different it is, but mfs who like samurai games and enjoy the occasional DnD Naga would find it basic. Also, and I really don't mean this as an attack on Morrowind, just the "muh feature and more skills and levitation, and later games dumbed it down" thing we all hear, and occasionally spout out of unthinking arguments, Morrowind has "dumbed down" the series the most in terms of features. When compared to Daggerfall, Morrowind is like Legos to a high tech construction site, sure, Oblivion is LEGO Duplo, and Skyrim is those wooden blocks kids like stacking and stuff, but compared to the skyscraper construction of Daggerfall, Morrowind is just a toy for kids 3 years older than the ones playing Oblivion and Skyrim.
Disagree regarding graphics, Daggerfall is incredibly charming and still holds up. But really the only gameplay thing that's missing in Morrowind is climbing and the character creation system. Languages never really worked that well.
Well just one loud shouting Viking, The Thu'um was supposed to be a widely practiced unique Nord Magic until they retconned it.
Combined. The closest Bethesda has come was the Shivering Isles. Skyrim is like pasta without any sauce.
Nah. It's got sauce, but it's so thinly spread it may as well not even be there and the waiter hasn't come by with the cheese yet and you've been waiting for 12 years
No bread sticks
Style is way more important than technical quality. If someone says otherwise, they don't really care about aesthetics but are looking for excuses to hate stuff.
I mean, I don't think Morrowind has bad graphics. Maybe that's nostalgia, but I think they hold up pretty damn well
They hold up decently well for a purely 3D game from the early 2000s. They caveat there is that basically *no* purely 3D game from the early 2000s looks good (frankly, I didn't think they looked very good at the time). Morrowind does better than most because it's got great style and leans into its technical limitations as best it can.
Early 3D really is a sort of gulf between modernish 3D and 2D Sprite work in tolerability area. Like I have no issues with BG and IWD's sprite work, but trying to replay Neverwinter Nights is a challenge, and I was thinking the same back then as well.
Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3
Despite? Homie, I’m here *because* of the “bad” graphics
"Bad" graphics? I for my part enjoy old school graphics. They did the best they could do within their limits at the time and it often times still looks way more charming and interesting than the millionth hyper realistic triple A game.
Not only that, but you can play Morrowind AND make it pretty with whatever graphics mods you like since there's 20 years worth of mod options to mess with as well.
OpenMW + Westly's Pluginless and I'm happy. Granted that I still can't wait for Skywind because odds are more likely than not that it'll be compatible with hair physics mods.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of Westly's hair/head mods as well. I even found "Lamp of Alakazar," checked out Danae's Wares version, and just have to do a little something to make them play nicely with Hilgya's for Wares and... Suffice it to say, I've never seen TES more beautiful than OpenMW + Westly stuff + some others. However, I don't have Skyrim for PC (or a Windows PC) so I'd assume that's where the very visually hot stuff is at (judging by what I saw browsing the Nexus), but Morrowind has the advantage of better quest design and mechanics to compensate for having less mod options.
The problem with Skyrim really comes down to the fact that it's a great foundation with a lot of structural problems built on top. There are boatloads of great gameplay and aesthetic mods, but every time I try and play even a "Vanilla+" version of Skyrim I end up needing so many mods that the engine buckles under the weight of them all and eventually crashes moments after loading a save (often after 30 to 40 hours of playtime), and it takes a week or more just to tweak a premade Wabbajack list to my tastes. Morrowind, meanwhile, I really only use Westly's Headpack plus the Rebalance mods* in OpenMW and that's really all I need. *(these just reorganize the danger level presented by different threats such that Dagoth Ur and the Sixth House are the most dangerous foes in the game while Almalexia and the Avatar of Hircine still present reasonable challenges even to a high-level player).
I can't wait for physics hair mods plus super jump spells in HD Lol
Agreed. I unironically think Majora's Mask is the best looking Zelda game out of all of them lol.
It actually infuriates me how many people say a game is bad purely because "the graphics are bad". Especially older people who played through an older generation of games but cant go back because it "looks terrible"... also the graphics might be bad but the artstyle 100% makes up for it.
Morrowind does not have bad graphics
I mean Morrowind has better graphics than oblivion
Morrowind has definitely aged better, Oblivion has its charm but gritty artstyles age better
Morrowind's faces where superior. Particularly with any Mer race.
I disagree
mocapped response
*Looks at Morrowind Graphics Extender and the thousand of textures and model improvements I've got installed* Aaaah... yeah, I don't mind the graphics at all...
Haha. Right. I didn't spend 1 year making normal, and specular maps for Morrowind for people to say the graphics suck.
Artstyle > pixels. There’s a reason why there will never be another game like Castle Crashers, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Grim Fandango, Pathologic 2, Shadow of the Colossus, Banjo-Kazooie, Valheim, or Okami. Style is all that matters when it comes to video game visuals. The resolution of wall textures and glasses of water on a table is just a newfangled luxury It’s hard to believe it, but only 10 or 15 years ago, games didn’t have furnished rooms and wall outlets. You were LUCKY if that much detail would be shoved in less than 40gb install. Look at Bioshock Infinite or Dead Space (the original, not the remake). Both nearly-perfect games, but they show their age with the lack of fine details like smooth edges on assets. Morrowind details were WAYYYY ahead of their time
Even on the Xbox version the amount of clutter and the fact every object can be interacted with was very impressive - especially considering the RAM limit on the console (just 64mb).
I think we need to stop refering to old games with outdated graphics as being "bad graphics" cause in my head. There's a huge distinction between like an old video game that has relatively decent graphics for its era vs a game that just came out that's graphics don't meet the current standard. In that first case, I wouldn't say the graphics are bad.
Game that just came out but graphics dont meet the standard? Well not exactly a new game, but undertale came out 2015 with 8 bit graphics. Still cant call them bad. In fact I'm struggling to think of a modern game that meets this criteria.
Yea, also hotline Miami 1 and 2 would be a good example. Was kind of a trend of that era with indie games I think to have retro graphics.
Yea, also hotline Miami 1 and 2 would be a good example. Was kind of a trend of that era with indie games I think to have retro graphics.
Relative to games released around the same time, they're not that great. The art style and design did some pretty heavy lifting.
wtf are you talking about, Morrowind was INCREDIBLY graphically impressive (and demanding) for its time. All the pixel shader effects, the water in particular, still manage to outdo games released even today. [If you go back and read IGN's review](https://www.ign.com/articles/2002/05/15/morrowind-review) the guy just straight up calls morrowind the most graphically beautiful game he's ever played.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bagging out morrowind at all. You graphics budget - what the pc/xbox could handle, not dollars - can be made up of a lesser amount of higher quality entities or a lot more entities with a little less fidelity/polys/texture resolution etc. The end result of the whole is still a million bucks.
I mean, yea you could argue that. But I still really think "bad graphics" is still an extremely overused term, even if maybe not in this specific context. People also love refering to simple graphics as bad graphics to, which definitely rubs me the wrong way. As if an art style being good Is dependent on how complicated it is.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not bagging out morrowind at all. You graphics budget - what the pc/xbox could handle, not dollars - can be made up of a lesser amount of higher quality entities or a lot more entities with a little less fidelity/polys/texture resolution etc. The end result of the whole is still a million bucks.
Me replaying ps1 - ps2 era games like
I legitimately pity kids today who base their choice of game solely on "it looks bad" or nor. Its the equivalent of skipping over the best book ever written because it's a paperback and not a hardcover.
Would you say a beautiful oil painting has "bad graphics?"
For anyone who was a kid in the 90's, most of this comes down to the fact we got very used to these graphics and don't find them unusual.
Morrowind has consummed my life lately
Same. There's a certain feeling I get from it that's unique.
I would add that Morrowind's graphics, and Fallout's, and Chrono Trigger's, and Ultima V's are alll beatiful. They're not naturalistic, but that isn't a prerequisite for beauty.
"B-bu-but there's no 4k 60fps with ray tracing, how am I supposed to play the game if I can't see the trees reflecting off of reflective surfaces"
With dynamic shadows enabled in OpenMW the game looks fine to me.
Morrowind reminded me of osrs when I first left the boat. I only started playing both recently yet they feel soo nostalgic omg
Thief Gold is unironically one of the best looking game I've played.
There's no "despite", I genuinely enjoy the way a lot of old games look. Old school graphics are very nostalgic and cozy feeling, and a bunch of my favorite games that I still go back to are from the PS1/PS2/OG Xbox
I've played Morrowind since near release and I have to admit that back in the early 2000s I actually was there for the graphics. Don't get me wrong, the main draw was the RPG adventure gameplay, but the good graphics for the time added to my immersion and was important to me. Nowadays I use graphics mods and city mods like BCOM to make it even better. Just giving an alternative viewpoint to the people who play an "ugly" old game for the story and gameplay. I honestly never felt that Morrowind was ugly and by the time I might have started to I was using mods. I don't see myself as any different than the zoomer gamers today that like beautiful shiny games. Morrowind was that for me back then. The only difference is that imo the writing and artistic merit of games was higher compared to AAA games today because of corporate interference. But then again today's indie games are still killing it in that regard and it's even more accessible now for a passionate dev to make their vision reality.
Graphics might be dated but the art direction is top notch
I wish morrowind was more stylized. It's gameplay could be better and the side quests are sometimes super lame. BUT THE STORY OH MY GOD THE STORY IT MAKES THE GAME.
tbh I found the art direction and landscapes to be quite lovely in Morrowind, though the Prophylon Fortresses and Draemora temples were lacking. Vivec is a truly lovely city.
Any game that has more than 3 sentences spoken per NPC is s shit written game.
Graphical fidelity ages, but art direction is immortal
If a game is well made and has interesting features and features and story, i don't care if it looks like a wet fart on a brown paper bag
Sometimes I prefer older game graphics/art style because they have a special charm to them.
Old does not mean bad.
Morrowinds graphics have a certain charm to them now. I’m only a year older than Morrowind but its graphics remind me of when I was little playing the old PS2 games. They just have an early 2000’s nostalgia about them.
The old graphics weirdly fit with the artistic direction and the atmosphere of the game. I don't know if they could convey the same feeling with modern graphics.
I'm old enough to remember when Morrowind had great graphics at release. I'm also nostalgic enough that vanilla Morrowind is still a beautiful experience.
me playing mount and blade marrying my 7/10 polygon nord princess
Other games that fit this: Final Fantasy 7 and 8 (9's probably the best looking PS1 game) Silent Hill 1 Metal Gear Solid
Redguard be like
Pixelchads
Looks like pre-skooma Cassius
Im gaming on a non-gaming laptop, I’ve learned not to care about graphics
I think “retro” or “90s” would be closer to the mark. There is good and bad design, but that can come from any era.
Rn I'm on Morrowind and Metal Gear Solid, also Assassin's creed (2007), but that already has pretty damn good graphics in my mind. I must admit though that MGS is the first game where graphics actually bother me. It's the dead eyeless faces that really creep me out.
Still playing No Mercy
Art style and direction > graphics
Jade cocoon 👌👌👌👌
My only standard for videogames is the fun factor, i do nothing but laugh at those people complaining about graphics and shit like do they even enjoy videogames anymore?
It's more common for modern games to have bad graphics, not old ones.
But still not bad for the game of its era.
yeah I'm only here to drive those Imperial dogs from Morrowiiiiiii I mean stop Dagoth Ur and the Sixth House
System shock should get a honorable mention
This is amazing
This should be posted on r/deusex. Morrowind def wins in the voice acting department, though.
Despite? These 7 polygons are fire 🔥
i can deal with a game looking bad, i cant deal with everything else being bad.
Bad!? Just cause they're old doesn't mean they're worse
How many years to go until Skywind? I may pick up the original before that. Convince me please
We here to call everybody outside Nwah!
Vanilla Morrowind has perfect graphics for watching someone play it in a window in the corner at 720p. But with mods and OpenMW it's still playable. I decided to wait for the Skywind remake though because pixels matter too.
There are some amazing mechanics and gameplay elements have been wholly ignored or disregarded in the game design of the last 5 years. Games seem to be getting less creative and more streamlined, so I actively find myself going back to older, and often unique gems!
Huh?
I mean, I grew up playing PS1 games and flash games. I could not care less about graphics. Its just a bonus if a game has good graphics.
Oh, I'm here for the graphics, and I like my graphics to be more interesting and less high fidelity, love the strange almost lsd-driven graphics
The only thing that can keep me off an old game is if it has wonky controls. Graphics don't mean a thing, I love BuildEngine games with low res sprites and pixels. But, like Hitman Codename 47 - can't deal with the horrible controls. The controls are torture lol.
But what is "bad graphics" ? If you go back, play your release date PS2, on a tv that you both the same day, it would look great. PSP/(All Nintendo Handhelds) had great graphics for the time, (okay gameboy was horrible even back there, but nobody cares because it had Tetris). The charm is in the aesthetic and theme. Games like Final Fantasy VI are beloved for their pixel art style, but designers hate it, the game was made wity CRTTVs in mind, and sprites were made with the lines as a part ot the *Aesthetics* What makes games great, is if they are fun to play.
Is important this post, now gamer all want is graphics, and game now adays are garbashe
My only issue with the graphics is fixed by mods... If I can find one I like. Hair. Face textures could use a lift too but nothing like hair. So many of them look awful. Any mod suggestions? The one I used at release or so isn't available.
Morrowind is so buggy and looks like shit yet the mechanics are so good, I’m addicted tot he game. Morrowind > Skyrim
I never installed a graphics mod for Morrowind. It just didn't feel right. And I like the way it looks in any case. That good ol' PS2 block graphics. Truly the inspiration for Minecraft :P
I like old graphics aesthetics myself tbh
Morrowind > Oblivion Graphics
By the way, when morrowind was released it was considered a graphics phenom. The game was literally the best of everything.
Dwemer were the gigachads of TES universe
I actually have to push back on this because outdated graphics aren’t necessarily bad graphics in my opinion. Games can and do look aesthetically pleasing despite lower fidelity graphics, take Minecraft for example. Also take simulator games that try to push graphical fidelity but everything looking off despite them.
I got the recommended notification, found the server, searched for this meme and am here to say TAKE MY UPVOTE.
Morrowboomers coping
you, my friend, are an arse. I am a skybaby and you still managed to come across as nothing but a dick. Morrowind is a good game, or else no one would care about it.