Port Royale 3 Review

Port Royale 3

I think it’s high time for a video game review, don’t you? I was meant to type one up for Mass Effect 3, but never really got there. Oh well, that’s a rant for another day (and no the rant is not about the ending, which I found adequate). This time it’s about the game Port Royale 3. I was browsing the games on special on steam one night, bored, and this one came up. It interested me particularly since it said that I could complete the game as a merchant. This suggested at a style of gameplay that diverged from the normal kill everything that stands in my way method and lately I’ve been particularly interested in being able to complete games without killing. And being that it was only $40, I figured I would buy it and give it a go.

I jumped straight into the campaign which, I believe, was actually quite well thought out in the beginning. You select either the life of adventure, or the life of peace. Regardless of what you select, you play through the first couple of tasks as a kind of tutorial to get you to learn how the game works. However, if it’s not your first playthrough, you’re not forced to sit through basic control instructions. Instead these are displayed through the use of videos, accessed through a link at the bottom of the task details so if you have played it before and know the basics, you can just complete the tasks and move on. Eventually you complete the prologue and here the game diverges depending on what path you chose.

Port Royale 3 is essentially a trading sim, and in this it is quite good and absorbing. You go from city to city, buying low and selling high. If you sell goods that the town needs and is without, your popularity rises, if you completely buy them out of an item, your popularity is lowered. And of course, the more you sell, the less money they are willing to give you for the items. Supply and demand works beautifully in this game. I thought the slider bar used to select how many goods to trade was a little too touchy and needing to hold down the mouse button, drag, and release the button to complete a trade was potentially problematic as I would occasionally have a twitch and sell all of my goods, or buy all the goods on offer (or the cat would insist on laying on my mouse hand, something that is happening all the more often now the weather is colder). But this was only a minor problem with what is otherwise very well executed. It may seem a little repetitive, and it is, but its repetition is soothing in a way and complete absorbing and I found I lost hours just travelling around the Caribbean trading, fulfilling tasks the governors of various towns set me, and avoiding or combating pirates. The supply and demand also encourages you to travel far for your goods as if you just trade between the same couple towns all the time, it takes too long for their goods to be replenished while the goods in other towns are stacked up. Consequently, I often found myself trading in a figure 8 kind of route, around the west side of the map first, up the centre where my main towns were located, and then down the east side of the map.

Now, while it seems that I thoroughly enjoyed this game, there were several areas that it fell short. For a start, the campaign was over far too quickly and this coming from someone who enjoys wasting time just going from town to town trading. At the end of it they left you with the vague notion of getting married to the girl you spent the campaign chasing and converted the game to a free map. This would be fine, but one area the trade campaign fails to set you up for is the insane amount of pirates. It’s one area where I feel the balancing just didn’t work even if it did make sense in a way. What happened were there were a couple of clans of pirates (and new ones would spring up if others were defeated) that would roam the water ways, attack traders, you know piratey stuff. The thing is, every time they won a battle, if you had more than one ship, they would steal all but your smallest, thus making their convoys all the stronger and leaving you with no cargo and a damaged, inferior ship. Now this wouldn’t be too bad, except they didn’t really have periods of just going away and allowing you to regroup. I found that as soon as I bought another ship, I was attacked again, defeated, and my big ship stolen making the pirates all the stronger and all the more impossible to defeat. Now this may just be my lack of foresight – a friend playing the same campaign has a huge convey that just wades through destroying all pirates in sight – but I feel it is a lack any player could make and something the campaign should have had us establish pretty early on. As I was trying to gather the materials needed to build a palace so I could marry my sweetheart, I was continuously attacked by pirates making it nigh impossible to the point that I gave up.

I then tried the adventure campaign and it was even shorter than the trade. Well, to be truthful, it probably had the same amount of tasks, it just took no where near as long to complete as the trade ones. I gave the manual combat a go and found it so clunky and hard to control that afterwards I quickly just chose the automatic option. Granted, this is likely a fail on my part but it was still somewhat of a game breaker for me. But that was fine, I don’t mind going the automatic route, I did it an awful lot in the total war series as well mostly cause the pitched battles took too long and I was impatient. That plan fell apart, however, when it came to what I suspect is the last mission where I am to manually attack a nasty pirate’s convoy and capture the biggest ship in order to save my love. I tried this so many time using so many different strategies and died every single time, to the point where I was verbally swearing at the computer screen (not THAT common an occurrence for me). Again, I gave up in disgust. This could have been made better if I was able to select strategies to use before using the automatic battle. In fact that could be really cool since the automatic battle just attempts to sink all ships. If I could have the option to try to capture one, two or three (since the most ships in a battle is three a side), the chances of success decreasing with each option selected (since it’s harder to capture a ship than sink it) then this could possibly solve the problem I was facing.

All in all, I found it was a satisfying trade simulator, but it just didn’t have enough meat to sink my teeth into it for very long. I think I only played it in short strides for maybe two weeks; I like a game to last me a month at least. It was similar enough that I kept trying to compare it to Anno 1404 (I’ll try to remember to review that game in a later post) and in a trade sense, it’s better, but in everything else it just falls far short. It was probably worth the $40 I paid for it, but I’m definitely glad I didn’t pay any more for it.

 

New Skyrim Mod (Update 1)

So I discovered that in my attempt to play with meshes for the mod I was working on, I broke Skyrim. So that one is now abandoned (at least for now until I feel like doing some more level design) and I downloaded a player house mod to use as my base in the mean time.

Instead I started playing around with the quest creation which has turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would be! This post is generally going to be a ‘where I am now and what’s broken so far’ kind of post.

My idea for the first part of this chain is:

Player finds a note pinned to the doors of inns that warns of a dangerous new cult forming and to report any knowlege to the jarl. The player finds and questions 3 people and finds the location of a hermit who can tell them more.

Pre-quest: player has not read notice.

Stage 1: Player reads notice, decides to find out more.

Stage 2: Player questions drunk, drunk won’t talk without a drink.

Stage 3: Player buys a drink and is informed of a brawler who might know more.

Stage 4: Player questions the brawler, but he won’t talk without a fight.

Stage 5: Player wins brawl, told of a begger who was close to someone involved.

Stage 6: Player questions begger, who requests a donation before saying anything.

Stage 7: Playger gives money, told of a house in Duskendale and is given the key. Told of a hermit who could help.

Stage 8: Player speaks to hermit and is informed of the cult.

Thus far, while I thought I had the flyer starting the quest, when I tested it it seems it’s not. Will have to investigate this further.

I’ve added the drunk, but for the life of me I can’t work out how to get gold removed from the player’s inventory to buy him a drink! Even the examples listed in various google searches (all different) fail the compile. Will have to do some more reading on that, as frustrating as it is.

So far that’s all I’ve really done. Seem to have spent most of the night on google with little to no success. Will see what a good night’s sleep does to help.

 

Mass Effect 2 DLC and a couple updates

I’m going to cover four things in this post.

First up: ONLY A DAY UNTIL MASS EFFECT 3!!!! WOOOOOO!!! I just hope my copy arrives tomorrow even if I’ll mostly be too busy on the weekend to really sink some hours into it.

Secondly: I’ve been plodding away on my Skyrim mod and have now finished cluttering up the new main area I’m creating and filling it with characters. Next is the navmesh so my characters do more than just sit on benches drinking all day. It’s been a slow process, mostly because I’m not completely familiar with the different packs available and what the things I want to put there are named. I often have to load a scene where I know what I’m looking for is located, find the object and take a note of the name, then go back to my own mod and find it that way. I also had some trouble with a particular altar that was gorgeous and perfect for what I wanted and didn’t think the ‘LOAD’ in front of the name was overly important. Turns out it is since the image is not solid and no matter how much playing around with swapping textures and the like I did, I couldn’t get it to become solid so had to settle for another one (I’m not talented enough an artist to make my own textures). I’ve been a little distracted from working on it though in preparation for Mass Effect 3

Thirdly: I just saw a video showing the character animation for Unity and it looks pretty impressive. I haven’t used unity before but probably will have a play soon in the future so this is pretty exciting! I couldn’t get the video to embed properly but here’s the link: http://video.unity3d.com/video/4655480

Finally: As part of my preparation for Mass Effect 3, I decided to run a refresher on the Mass Effect saga so that I will remember everything that happened. But rather than playing it exactly the same I decided to take the opposite direction to what I had before, which means a male renegade Sheppard. I finished the first quest again in ME1 before remembering those horrible three planets I always got stuck on (refer to this post for a reminder) and decided it wasn’t worth it. Instead I found a couple of sum-up videos on youtube and watched them instead, and just started again with ME2, again with a male renegade character. All the customizable characters were ugly and despite my best efforts I couldn’t make them look both good and youngish so I ended up going with the default character. And I have to say, as much as I feel guilty sometimes and still find myself unable to be mean to crew members, some of the renegade options are fantastic! Never thought I would say that. He’s not someone I can relate to so definitely a second playthrough character, but punching out that reporter was hilarious!

I also downloaded a heap of DLC. I was interested in the two which have new characters and seeing how that affects ME3, The Arrival interested me because it seemed to be a Mass Effect 2.5 kind of story with the reapers, and the Shadowbroker had been recommended to me by a couple of people. I have completed the two quest ones, and the Master Thief character loyalty quest so I thought I would do a mini review on them.

The first DLC I completed was for Kasumi, Master Thief. There was nothing involved in picking her up like there was for the rest of the characters, which I found a little disappointing, but it was only a fairly cheap DLC. She was an interesting character so I jumped straight to do her loyalty quest straight away. It was a lot of fun, and quite different to the other ones in that I had to assist her in a heist quest. Very interesting and different (for the Mass Effect shoot-em-up games) and I thought maybe this was a quest that can be done without ever firing a shot. Until all things go to hell. Should have seen that coming. Even so it was a lot of fun and, it could just be that it’s been a while, but I found some of the combat challenging and the final boss fight had some fun mechanics. Needless to say this was a DLC I loved!

Next up, completely by accident, was The Arrival. I had planned to leave this one to last so it really leads in to ME3 but I forgot that the lead I followed was a part of that quest line so wound up playing it anyway. This one was… well it was fun, but somewhat irritating as well. It seemed to focus a lot on the fighting with only a little bit of story that’s mostly predictable. There’s one particular section where there’s just wave after wave of enemies coming at you and, because you have to do it without any crew, it’s quite difficult to keep up with the swarming enemies. I think I did fairly well and probably got to the last wave when a huge mech came storming in and killed me. Frustrated, I was about to get up and go get something to eat before coming back and trying again, only ***SPOILER AHEAD*** the death screen wasn’t the same as normal, and it just faded to black. If I had known it was going to do that I wouldn’t have tried so hard and wasted so much ammo! Makes me think this would have been even more difficult as a soldier who couldn’t rely on biotic attacks. It then included taking control of a mech to break Sheppard out and that was pretty cool, I just wish it lasted longer or could have been used more often since after that it was just shoot shoot shoot most the time. It looked like it tried to be different by having a puzzle or two in there but, really, they were so obvious they didn’t even slow me down. All in all, I was disappointed with this DLC, but it wasn’t all bad.

The last one I finished was the Shadowbroker. Now I never had a relationship with Liara. I flirted with her in ME1, but when forced to choose, I just couldn’t get past her tentacle head to form any true attachment. This one was a lot of fun! Along with the normal fighting, it included a car race! That was awesome, makes me wish there could be a mini game, maybe a podrace style betting system to play whenever you feel like it (there’s a mod idea…). It also drew in the story that started in the comic book that came with the game (I bought the digital deluxe version, love documentaries on the games). The final boss battle knocks out your crew member so it’s down to you and Liara and has a lot of awesome mechanics that are really a lot of fun. It was probably my favourite fight of the whole game, even more than the final boss battle in the main story line simply because of its mechanics. Now I’m not going to give away what happens at the end of this quest line because I highly recommend playing it yourself, but the rewards for it are pretty epic, and not just in the form of loot.

I still have to do the mercenary Zaeed’s loyalty quest. I’ve picked him up and hated him right away. He’s such an arse! I kind of don’t want to do his loyalty quest but at the same time, I might be surprised, so we’ll see.

Anyway, that’s it from me. Looking forward to Mass Effect 3, and when I get portals working properly on my mod I’ll post a screenshot of it thus far.

 

Creation Kit N00b

Alright, so my little break lasted longer than I thought and my idea for a Skyrim diary fell in a bit of a heap when I couldn’t play as often as I liked. And then Christmas happened, and moving and, you know, life. But now I’m settled in a new place and ready to get back into the routine. Today I’m going to write about my Creation Kit adventures.

The Skyrim Creation Kit was released today so, naturally, the first thing I do when I get home is boot it up. Not exactly up to a good start when it throws numerous errors when I load the Master.esm file considering I’ve never installed any mods but a little googling reveals that this doesn’t seem to cause any issues and it’s safe to just ignore everything, which I do. Now I played around a little with the Morrowind Creation Kit way back around 2002 or something but wasn’t really overly successful with it. I found the user interface a little to cumbersome to my teenage brain. After watching the three released video tutorials and following along with the first two, however, it seems a lot easier, though whether things have changed or I’ve just matured to the point where it seems simple I’m not sure about. Regardless I now feel confident enough to have an explore. There are so many variations of everything that it will take a long time to learn my way around exactly what is available. For now I think I’ll just play with making various rooms till I get completely comfortable with finding things and navigating in a 3D space.

Above is the first Episode of the Creation Kit Tutorial by Bethesda if anyone is interested.

I have two ideas for mods so far to make in the future. The first will be more of a general faction quest line one, more to play around with the objects and quest tools all at once, maybe with a new cave or two. The second will involve creating a whole new landscape and long quest chain to go along with it, a very large project.

There are also a number of written tutorials accessed at http://www.creationkit.com with three in particular that interest me now I’ve come to grips with the basics, the Level Designer to create new areas (caves and the like), the Quest Designer which is what I’m mostly interested in to create new quest lines (duh), and the Scripter to create new scripts. I think the one I’m least comfortable trying is the scripter since it uses Papyrus which I’ve never even heard of let alone used. But, hey, that’s what tutorials are for.

*2 hours pass*

Whew! I’ve created my first dungeon-esque layout by following the tutorial. Of course it’s very empty and the rooms are all very symmetrical, but there were a lot of tips in the third tutorial video on how to jazz things up and the next video when its released is supposed to have tips on how to make cluttering up empty rooms in a way that looks good so that will definitely be one to look out for. There are more written tutorials but I think my taste of level editing is done at least for tonight. Now though I shall save that plug in and move on to the next tutorial! But tomorrow, as it’s getting late now.

 

I’m back! And a Skyrim Diary

My last exam for the semester was finished today (hooray!) so now I’m mostly free to get back into posting. As I was thinking about what to post, what games to write about etc, I remembered an old Morrowind related blog I read in which a player wrote about their experiences playing for the first time. It was really interesting and somewhat funny too, so I thought I would try to emulate that myself. And since, like nearly 300,000 other people (http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/121/1212468p1.html?_cmpid=ign1407) I’m currently playing Skyrim, I figured it should be about that. Especially since I expect I’ll be playing Skyrim for longer than a month so my previously promised, one review a month, would be impossible while immersed in this world. Be warned, however, that this will likely contain spoilers, so don’t read if you don’t want anything revealed. I will try to keep the details to a minimum, but there will be some things that are impossible to explain without spoiling something. So here goes.

Day 1

My first entry into the world of Skyrim was… a little annoying. Don’t get me wrong, I was instantly impressed with how pretty it was, the quality of the voice acting, the unique way to start the game and all that. And on a side note I remember thinking that the way the player is moved to where they need to go on their own, without the player actually doing it, was a good thing because it meant it would be possible to do the same kind of thing for the mod I’ve been planning. No, the problem that I had was I was blind during the character creation. I created a character but didn’t see how to change how they looked so, naturally, I figured that would come after I entered the name. Nope, wrong. I asked a friend and they soon corrected me, telling me it’s before the name is entered (a good thing remembering the problems I had with Morrowind where I wanted to name my character appropriate to my race, but didn’t know what race I would be just then).

So I re-rolled. And because I was chatting with said friend at the time it appeared as though the game didn’t like to be alt-tabbed out of too many times, and it crashed. Twice.

Apologising to my friend, I then completely ignored him and re-rolled a final time.

An hour. That’s how long it took me to decide what character I wanted to play. They all looked fantastic and I found I could probably easily play an Orc or Redguard for the first time in the series (the looks usually annoy me too quickly for those two races especially). In the end it was a toss between a female Nord, a female Breton, or a male Khajiit. In the end I went for the kitty-boy, then spent forever tweaking his looks to appear just right, black fur with grey highlights, and golden eyes, a claw scar just under his right eye. Suitably cool looking

My Skyrim character

I always enjoy playing more the stealthy kinds of characters, a little magic thrown in there, and, if I can, very little melee. And the Khajit look particularly cool in this game.

My first dragon encounter, as part of the start of the game, was with Alduin himself, and he was scary! If there’s one thing I could say about this game on my first couple hours of game play, it’s that Bethesda did a fantastic job with their dragons. I must have jumped at least three times when he was flying around attacking people and destroying buildings.

When I finally managed to escape that battle and make it to the first town, emerging out of the cave I instantly had the same Wow that I experienced in Oblivion the first time. My mouth must have been a permanent O as I looked around, taking everything in. I took a round about way to the first town, Riverwood, exploring all the trees, the foilage, attempting to catch salmon and getting swept over a waterfall instead (yes even the water has physics).

Once there I spent most of my time exploring the interactions, seeing what I could steal easily and what I couldn’t, playing with the smithing skill and with the saw mill. I had a go at wood cutting, but it was slow, and I only got 30 gold for each load so I only did that two or three times.

I did take on a quest for a love triangle (which if you’ve been reading the reviews you would have heard about). I could hitch a woman up with either a rather self-assured and cocky elf, or a bard. I wanted to set her up with the bard, so I told the bard I had a fake letter from the elf denouncing him. He in turn wrote his own fake letter. I took that to the woman in question and chose to tell her the truth but, despite my best intentions, that only led her to believe that the bard was a bastard for faking such a letter (I didn’t get the option to say that the elf did the same thing) so then the elf liked me and the bard didn’t. Oh well.

I also got a quest from a trader to recover his stollen golden claw, which included a dungeon crawl ending in finding a wall of power, the same dungeon Todd Howard shows in the 20min demo (I’ve linked part two which shows the dungeon I’m talking about).

I then followed the main quest to the next city, where I informed the Jarl that I had witnessed the initial dragon attack, and was called out to actually fight my first dragon. That was a lot of fun, and thrilling too even if I did have help bringing it down. The shouts they give… wow. I could really feel them, especially when they’re directed at me. Naturally that’s where I first absorbed the dragons soul and can use the shout learned from the wall in the dungeon.

And then, as I return back to the city, I hear  loud, resonating “DOVAKIIN!” It really gives shivers to hear it, and I find out that that was the Greybeards calling me. So, like the good kitty I am, I accepted their call, climbing the 7000 to the Throat of the World (I started counting but stopped bored after only 100). They had some tests for me to do which, in the process I learned one new shout and extended the one I already had, and then they wanted me to do a dungeon crawl. I checked the clock and decided that 1:30am was late enough and called it quits.

 

Day 2

I decided I didn’t feel like going through a dungeon today so I detoured from the main quest line, fast travelling down to the bottom of the mountain (it was annoying enough to climb up it with really tough fights, I didn’t want to walk all the way back down), then walking towards Riften. I wanted to join the Thieves Guild and since I had yet to hear anything about them in-game, I had to ask a friend where I could find them. A little annoying, but I figured I would explore as I went.

Entering Riften, I overheard a conversation saying that the Thieves Guild was in the sewers, so I headed down that way. Only to have my arse handed to me on a silver platter by some bandits. Maybe I got that wrong. Going to an inn to rest up, a man approaches me with a less than legal job offer. Was this my lead into the elusive Thieves Guild? The quest was actually pretty fun and involved picking the lock on a merchants strong box and stealing a certain ring, then ‘pick pocketing’ another merchant and leaving the ring there. I was a little worried about the pick pocket part though, since I had yet to work on that skill and didn’t want to be detetcted. It went off without a hitch though and I was told that, if I make it through the sewers, there would be more money where that came from.

This time I went prepared, stocking up on potions and remembering that I can use my shout ability (I had forgotten last time) and the fight went a little easier. Making my way through the sewers to the underground tavern I am officially welcomed into the Thieves Guild, and am given a new suit of armour, and three quests, one ‘official’ one where I had to burn down three bee hives and empty a safe in a well guarded manor (that already sounds fun) and two in Solitude, a break and enter, and a forging quest. Already this is showing far more creativity than past game so I eagerly accept them and set out.

It is on my way north west that I run into my first randomly encountered dragon. I was a little worried at this point – I was far from prepared, very few potions of actual use – but I had saved recently so figured I would give it a go. Thankfully it was rather close to a fort riddled with bandits and wolves to either side of the road and the dragon was more interested in getting a feed at first, attacking the bandits that shot at it, and chomping up on the wolves and elk around the area leaving me free to shoot at it with my bow. I had it down to a little under half health by the time it turned it’s attention on me. Then it was a mad rush to deal as much damage as I could, as quickly as I could, and heal whenever I got the chance and ran out of potions. It was a close call (a very close call in fact, since I was still on fire when it was brought down) but I won, looted the body and drained it’s soul.

Continuing on my path, I hadn’t gone far before I ran into another dragon! This one I knew I wouldn’t be able to take on – I was nearly full encumberance and had no useful potions left – so I hoofed it out of there, leaving it to its meal of mamoths and giants.

Finally, I come to a city where I remember there was a lead about the Dark Brotherhood, the other main guild I wanted to check out. Entering, I arrive in time to witness how racist the local Nords are (cool, but left me wondering how they would respond to a Khajit since they are often prejudiced against in Elder Scrolls lore) before realizing it was getting late and I had an exam the next day. Time to call it a night.

 

Brief Pause

Alright, so it’s been nearly a month since my last post, and I’m actually writing to say it will probably be a while till my next one as well. This last month I have been non-stop with uni assignments and house hunting and feeling flat by the end of the day and writing an interesting and thoughtful blog post is usually the last thing I want to do.

Next month will be much the same, only combine studying for exams with actual moving (twice since my current lease runs out before my new one starts so will be crashing at friends) and I will likely be largely absent for all of November as well. I would like to try to give NaNoWriMo (for the non-writers reading this, that’s National Novel Writing Month in which I attempt to write a complete 50,000 word novel in the month of November (http://www.nanowrimo.org/) and during that I want to write the quest logs and dialogue for a mod, written for Skyrim but also with enough flexibility that it could be edited slightly to fit any fantasy role playing game. I have the vague concept of what I want it to be about, and the land I want it to take place in, but I never did to well plotting every little detail out, I tend to get bored doing that. And then, I admit, I will likely be playing a bit of Skyrim as well. It’s only the game I’ve been waiting to play for about a year after all.

I promise though, things will pick up in December. I have nothing planned there, and the Christmas holidays to fill and plenty of saved opinions to write about so hopefully you’ll forgive me and I can make up for it then!

 

Gothic 4 and Morrowind Mods

It’s normally around this time that I’ll have finished a game and be all eager to post a review on it. Problem is, that hasn’t happened this month. Part of that is because it’s assessment time at uni, and I need to pull up my programming grade which means not leaving assignments to the last minute (I don’t program well when I’m stressed). But another part of it is my lack of attention span when it comes to games. Like gamers around the world, I’m holding my breath for when Skyrim comes out and I didn’t want to get swept up in a game only to abandon it when my shiny collector’s edition arrives.

I started off playing Gothic 4: Arcania. That was…. well let’s just say amusing. The gameplay was pretty good at first, and the story line wasn’t bad, but the dialogue? It was hilariously bad, both the writing and the voice acting. I hate acting and am terrible at it, but I felt even I could have done a better job in some areas. And bugs? I counted fourteen, then stopped counting. Most of them were graphical bugs, a couple of dialogue ones, but no game destroying ones so I was able to laugh at them and move on. However the game itself started to become very repetative after a while. I often see combat as a means to an end to get to the interesting story parts and after a while this game followed that same pattern. And when it became a chore to wade through this mob of enemies and that mob of enemies just to find out what happens next I stopped playing.

Thinking about what I should play next, and keeping in mind that it was only just under two months till Skyrim came out, I decided to boot up the old Morrowind (not Oblivion, I didn’t like Oblivion, too repetitive, boring, and content lacking). Now, being an nine year old game, it’s noticeably dated, espcially graphics wise. I remember the very first time I played it and I was completely blown away by the fantastic graphics, stunning sky and water, the gorgeous visible enchantments on items. It was fantastic. Now, however, I was able to see the segmented bodies, rather blocky clothing and pretty terrible faces. However, given that there are nine years of mods available, there was plenty I could do to correct this and give the game a fresh new feel.

I found a mod pack that I believe was called Morrwind Overhurl (similar to an Oblivion Overhurl pack I used). It’s not perfect but it does give a lot of good mods. Even though I already have a copy of the game, I used the version through steam for this play through (there was a Bethesda Pack that was cheap during the Summer Sale, which included Fallout 3 and its various DLC which I didn’t have), which included Morrowind, Tribunal, and Bloodmoon, as well as the official updated patches. The pack I used doesn’t have descriptions of all the mods and I’ve long since forgotten and didn’t write down the specific details of each so what I do know is as much as what I’ve guessed from actually playing, combined with any descriptions they provide in the data files.

The mod collection isn’t perfect and there is one error message at the start that you can click through which I believe is due to a mod responsible for blending in the world seams since there is a specific mod for that and I noticed a lot of very obvious world seams. The game also crashes most of the time on exiting, but that doesn’t matter much since you’re quitting anyway. There are a few minor graphical problems, some flickering in the trees and occassionally there’s ghost-like shadows in the sky especially if you move quickly, the outline of what was just there is still visible. But to my mind these are fairly minor and after first seeing them I’m able to look past them and I don’t even notice them any more.

I’ll list the mods that I’m using, with a short description (or guess) of what they change. The first group of mods are the aesthetic ones. Just a warning, there are a lot.

• Morrwind Patch 1.6.5 Beta (BTB Edit)
  This is a fan made patch, fixes a few things, doesn’t really detail what.

• Better Heads
  Replaces the heads and hair of NPCs with more detailed versions, and allows them to be used for the player.

• Imp Guard anticlone
  Makes Imperial Guards a bit less generic. I hadn’t really noticed much difference from this apart from a few different head and hair options, but then I hadn’t really noticed that all the guards looked the same in the original.

• Better Heads Tribunal addon
  Same as the normal Better Heads, but for the Tribunal expansion

• Better Heads Bloodmoon addon
  Same as the normal Better Heads, but for the Bloodmoon expansion

• TLM-Ambient Light + Fog Update
  Reduces the ambient light in interior cells and removes fog. This is great for view distances, but you need a torch inside a cave as adjusting the gamma doesn’t work (which is my usual trick). It can be a little annoying sometimes, but is great for realistic immersion.

• TLM – Light Sources (Clearer Lighting)
  Modifies the colour of light sources making it more natural. I didn’t notice a difference, but it’s possible I just didn’t remember what it was before.

• SirLuthor-Tools
  Replaces the textures for lockpicks, repair items, and probes. Didn’t notice too much of a difference, but, again, I may not remember

• Unique Banners and Signs
  21 taverns and inns given thier unique sign to match the name of the place. This is pretty nifty, gives a more unique feel to the world.

• Better Bodies
  Similar to Better Heads, this replaces the bodies with more continuous bodies. You’re given the option on installing it for underwear (painted on underwear, similar to vanilla Morrowind), full nude (anatomically correct bodies (including different sizes based on race which can be fun)) or ‘peanut gallery’ (the guys have underwear the girls don’t).

• Key Replacer Trib & BM
  This one didn’t have a description, but the logical guess would be that it replaces the texture of keys for Tribunal and Bloodmoon

• Statue Replacer
  Again, no description, but the logical guess is it replaces the textures of statues.

• bones
  Adds bone-like footstep sounds to skeletons. Personally I don’t think it sounds like how I would imagine a skeleton walking, sounds more like keys jangling, but that’s just me.

• Illuminated Windows – Bloodmoon v1.2
  Makes the windows and some objects illuminated for Bloodmoon. I didn’t get up to Bloodmoon so I can’t verify how this works.

• Illuminated Windows v1.2
  Same as the above, but for Morrowind and Tribunal. I did notice windows appearing as though they were illuminated from within which was pretty cool, but I’m not sure what the ‘objects’ are and didn’t get to Tribunal to check there.

• Shieldfx
  I’m not sure what this does, I don’t use a shield, but probably better sound effects for using a shield.

• Book Jackets – Morrowind
  Replaces the covers of books to make them more realistic, unique and pretty, and also allow you to read the title on the cover and spine, very cool.

• Book Jackets – Tribunal
  As above but for Tribunal.

• Book Jackets – Bloodmoon
  As above but for Bloodmoon

• Expanded Sounds
  Adds more ambient sounds (insects, birds etc). It’s pretty cool, makes the land seem more alive while exploring.

• Better Clothes_v1.1
  Replaces clothes with Better Body compatible clothing

• NewBlood_MwTbBm
  I’m not 100% sure, there was no description, but a guess is that it adds blood/redoes the blood texture

• Gothic Attire Complete v1.1
  I haven’t come across this yet, but I don’t know if it means that it doesn’t work, or I just haven’t explored enough to find them.

• Vality’s Ascadian Isles Addon
  I think this is what’s responsible for completely redoing the landscape and textures of Ascadian Isles – VERY pretty, if a little buggy with some flickering parts and strange ghosting shadows at times

• Neo’s Unique Creatures
  Changes the textures of some of the creatures. So far I’ve noticed the nix hound is different

• DN_AshVampires
  Makes all ash vampires look unique. I haven’t noticed too much different, maybe some vague changes but nothing substantial.

• Westly’s Master Headpack X
  Adds new playable heads? There’s no description

• Vality’s Bitter Coast
  The same as the last Vality’s mod, but for the Bitter Coast region.

• Vality’s Balmora
  As above, but for Balmora

• BetterClothesForTB
  Since I haven’t been to Mournhold yet, I can’t verify this one, but the name says it all, better clothes.

• correctUV Ore Replacer 1.0
  Not sure but guessing it’s a texture replacement for the ores.

• Graphic Herbalism
  No need to open plants like a container, just pick like in Oblivion, and the image is changed to show it’s picked. Really useful for budding herbalists out there.

• Graphic Herbalism Extra
  As above but with mining, and mining also requires a pick, and ‘some plants have been changed to require a tool also’ though I havent come across any yet.

• New Argonian Bodies – Mature
  Works with better bodies but for beasts, includes distinct beast shadows

• New Kajiit Bodies – Mature
  As above but for Kajiits

• New Veloth’s Judgement 2
  Replaces the weapon Veloth’s Judgement with higher res meshes, textures and icon. Never having come across Veloth’s Judgement I can’t verify this.

• Particle Arrow Replacer
  I’m not sure but I believe this is the mod responsible for the arrow heads glowing in relation to the enchantment (green glow for poison, red for fire etc)

• UAR_ChodalaBoots
  Not sure, replace boot textures perhaps?

• Vurt‘s Solstheim Trees & Bushes Replacer
  Replaces trees and bushes textures in Solstheim

• MDP Compilation
  More Detailed Places, adds ‘atmosphere’. Not sure on the specifics since I have a lot of mods that add detail.

• Vurt’s Grazelands Trees Bushy
  Another terrain mod, making trees more bushy.

• More Better Clothes
  More texture improvements to clothes

• bcsounds
  The sounds of swamp wildlife, and dragonflies can be seeen living around the muck ponds, pretty good, adds some good atmosphere and reminds you that it really is swampland.

• Golden Gold
  Makes the gold…. gold.

• Animated Morrowind
  It doesn’t have a description, but I believe this mod is responsible for the different menu and loading screens. The menu screen has high res textures added and the loading screen has some beautiful screenshots. Looks very nice, and I would even hazard to say more professional than the concept art it originally had.

• New Voices
  Adds some new voices. So far I’ve come across one, the dude who gives you corprus, he actually narrates parts of the dialogue, very cool.

• Vurt’s Ashlands Overhaul
  Redoes the Ashlands textures and landscape

• TLM – Light Sources (Lanterns)
  I believe this changes the light for tribunal

• TLM – External Lights Ownership
  I believe this makes exterior lights property so you can’t steal them (visibly at least)

• Animated Soulgems
  Glowing soulgems, very cool

• Mournhold Overhaul – No NPC’s
  Redoes the textures in mournhold but doesn’t add extra NPCs for slower computers. I kind of wish I had a choice for that because I know my computer could handle more NPCs and I would have liked to see how it changed.

• UniqueFinery
  I believe this adds textures to necklaces and rings and the like, but it’s also possible it adds more jewellery and gloves

• WA_Signy_Sighnposts(!)
  You can now read the sign posts without having to aim the cursor at them

Now the fixes. Some of these are for fixes with the mods, and some are for the vanilla game.

• DB_Attack_Mod
  Sets the Dark Brotherhood to attack you only when you’re ready to face them, not at level one when they’ll kill you outright

• GH_ES1.3 Patch
  Merges scripts from Expanded Sounds 1.3 with Graphic Herbalism

• GH_Extra_ES1.3 Patch
  Same as above but with the Graphic Herbalism Extra mod

• The Imperial Legion Badge
  It’s not a patch to fix a bug per say, but it does fix that really annoying issue if you’re a member of the Imperial Legion where you need to equip the armour in order to talk to anyone within that faction. It adds a badge to your inventory that takes the same role and if you ever lose one, you can just get a new one from someone in the Legion. Though the batch icon is pretty ugly.

• Water Level Fix – Full
  Fixes interior water bugs

• Ebonheart Fix
  I don’t know what this does specifically, there’s no description (This is why you should always add a description!)

• Texture Fix 1.8
  Gets rid of seams in the landscape textures, apparently. It doesn’t appear to work for me. Not sure if it’s because of a conflict or the mod itself doesn’t work, and I’m not sure if it’s the cause of the error on loading, but it would make sense if it was.

• Texture Fix – Bloodmoon
  Removes landscape seams from the Island of Soltheim. Not having gotten to Soltheim, I can’t tell if this works, but judging by the above one I would doubt it.

• Balmora Un-Mod
  I’m not sure what this one does as there’s no description. All I can do is guess from the description, which I’m sure you can too. Possibly undoes something so that Vurt’s Balmora mod works?

I also added some new content mods, just for variety in case I got bored, though in truth the complete new quest lines I have yet to try out.

• BT_Whitewolf_2_0
  The white wolf of lokken mountain – Help Laurenna to save the white wolf, solve a murder mystery and restore peace and happiness in Lokken

• Hilgya the Seamstress
  A clothier has been added to Dagon Fell, selling clothes for Better Bodies

• Bloated Caves
  I haven’t explored a lot of caves but the couple I have makes me believe that there is a new ‘bloated’ herb you can get inside caves

• Unique Jewelry and Accessories
  Adds tons of new jewelry and accessories, and with decent values on them (rings are around 150 value instead of a measly 30, making them a good thing to steal, being light and worth more).

• almalexia armor
  Almalexia’s armour is now wearable by players.

• Psy_IronMeshImprove_Uniques_BME
  Adds uniquely named iron weapons with their own meshes. Didn’t come across many myself, but I also wasn’t paying attention as I obtained (*cough*stole*cough*) a better quality weapon fairly early on.

• Unique_Tombs
  I’m not sure if this simply changes the tombs so there’s more variation or actually adds more, I’m not much of a tomb explorer. I admit, they creep me out haha.

• Better Skulls
  Provides uniquely named skulls. Not sure if this is just changing the name of a few skulls, or actually adding ones that look different though.

• Homes To Let v2pt0
  Remember how when asking how to find Caius Cosades you’re told that he rents a house at the top of Balmora? Well this cool little mod adds homes of various quality all over Morrowind and it’s expansions that the player can rent. I chose one in Balmora for 200 gold a week. I paid my 200 and the room was unlocked for me. It was fairly basic, but it was also one of the cheapest (it includes a Redoran Manor in Ald Ruhn as well). Apparently I’m supposed to be honest and go there every week to pay rent. I thought I would test this out, half expecting 200g to be automatically removed from my inventory. Nope. Nothing. Then I thought maybe there’s a grace period after which you would be reported to the guards for not paying, which would be pretty awesome, so I wait several months (and play some in between). Six months later and still no repercussions so personally I would want to edit this mod to have something there to react to this, but it’s a cheap way to get somewhere to store the loot you can’t or don’t want to pawn off.

Finally, there are a few mods that I have no idea what they do, but I’ll add them here so that it’s complete.

• OR_Fang
• TVwofs
• SNR_ThievesStep_Standart (I noticed after rising a little in the Fighter’s Guild the Thieves won’t let me join, probably because of the war between them. This could have something to do with that, but I’m not sure)
• DA_Complete

Well there it is. I’m rather happy with the mods, even with the couple of bugs and that I didn’t wind up playing long enough to experience them all. It did reiterate that Morrowind is a LONG game. I would love it if Skyrim has even just two thirds of that much content, but I’m not getting my hopes up after the rather empty Oblivion.

As it is now, a friend has gotten me back into playing Rift. I beta tested that and really enjoyed it – it had gathered all the best parts of various MMO’s and put them in the one game with none of the problems – but wound up losing interest in it mostly because I’m a social player and when my friends stop playing, I lose interest too. So that may be the next game that I write about if I manage to keep at it for a month or so till…. SKYRIM!!!!!!!