Except that "breaking the fourth wall" is probably an unhelpful phrase here, implying as it does a clean separation between how we experience the world within a game and how we process the world outside it. I do, however, know somebody who has a firmer grasp of the lore - the interactive fiction designer Kateri, who has blogged at length on the subject of Morrowind's metaphysics and its chronic habit of breaking the fourth wall. I am almost certainly going to get something horribly wrong. I should probably offer the caveat at this point that where Elder Scrolls lore is concerned I am but an apprentice, weaned on the fields of Skyrim and only recently acquainted with Vvardenfell. The writers' agenda goes beyond poking fun, however. You may give your oath, then keep it or break it as you like." It's almost as though he's taking the piss out of your essential detachment, pointing to the fact that, much as NPCs may waffle about destiny and duty, a player is quite capable of indulging some impulse for hours on end while the universe teeters on the brink of ruin. "You will receive the responsibility as an oath. "You may accept the gift, then do with it as you will," Vivec comments. Like many an RPG ruler before, he calls on you to save the realm from an otherworldly menace, but as the scene unfolds his address grows almost mocking, labouring the options with a care that borders on parody. Games that know they're games can, of course, be incredibly tiresome - see also, the hilarious scriptwriter's gambit of having characters moan about fetch-quest design in the middle of a fetch-quest - and there are shades of this kind of humour in your first meeting with Vivec, Morrowind's gangly Yoda of a god-king. Morrowind has plenty of implausible UI elements, for starters - an ever-present minimap, the ability to pause inches from death in order to scoff down 20 Kwama eggs in one go - but more importantly, it's one of those games that knows it's a fantasy, commenting on its own artifice throughout. The truth is a little more complex, not to say mercilessly arcane. You might read all that back and conclude that Morrowind feels more "real", or at least, more "grounded" than many of its peers and successors - a world shorn of those gamey contrivances and conveniences that can't help but expose the simulation for a sham, even as they help you explore. And my, what an environment to get lost in - with its balding purple hills that reveal themselves to be enormous toadstools on closer inspection, its Dunmer citadels that evoke the stepped sandstone mounds of Angkor Wat. Due to be resurrected this summer as an expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online, Morrowind isn't a particularly large or impenetrable world - its roads well-signposted, its towns clustered close together - but having to actually look for the place you're looking for is invigorating, a show of faith in both the player's patience and the environment's intelligibility. Sometimes you have little to go on beyond the name of a region - there's a mission to locate somebody near Red Mountain that plays out like a Hunter Thompson rewrite of Christ roaming the wilderness, in which you fend off screeching winged vermin while combing the dunes for your quarry.
The directions aren't even universally reliable, or exact. Returned to after a decade's worth of Assassin's Creed and Far Cry, it's all rather terrifying, like sobering up in the middle of a busy motorway.
#Gamebryo engine age series
There are no omni-visible floating diamond icons, no distance-to-arrival readouts - just a series of landmarks and turnings, scribbled down in your increasingly unwieldy journal. Approach somebody about a quest in Morrowind, by contrast, and you'll be handed a list of directions. Most currently prospering open world RPGs are littered with waypoints and breadcrumb trails, their treasures and secrets tagged for consumption once you've accosted the relevant NPC. The game's once-breathtaking Gamebryo engine may creak with age, and its brittle, RNG-heavy combat may seem relentlessly archaic, but Morrowind's relative shortage of navigational aids now feels positively radical. The appeal of Morrowind for a first-time player today is surely that of getting lost.
0 kommentar(er)
