» Sun Jul 31, 2011 12:42 pm EDIT: I should stress that I am playing The Elder Scrolls on Xbox, not PC. That means that yes I'm playing a "lesser" version of the game, but it's also more definitive in its aims and successes. So bear in mind that modding is not an option for me and more importantly, is not really a fix for this problem without changing the game into something it was not originally intended to be.
TOO MUCH FREEDOM
When The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was released by Bethesda in 2002, everyone fell in love with its detail and freedom. Here was a game that let you do what you want, when you want, who you want. Don't want to complete the main quest? Sure thing. Don't want to kill anyone in the game whatsoever? Possible, but you're an idiot. Want to just cut and run into the wilderness, never to return? You could, and more than that, it probably won't even be by choice. Morrowind was a dangerous continent filled with monsters, a character of your complete design, and this overwhelming sense of absolute freedom. But how much freedom is too much? Well, one only needs to look at its sequel, Oblivion, to find out.
The best thing about Morrowind is that it felt like a living breathing world. It was massive in scope (approximately 40 square kilometres), possessed fantastical flora and fauna and was incredibly dangerous for all but the most battle hardened warriors. But most important was its sense of risk and reward.
If you strayed from the beaten path, you eventually had to stumble back onto it to get home. The only way to get anywhere in a hurry was to take silt striders, which only traveled to the surrounding towns, not all across the continent. This resulted in the need to memorise which towns gave you fast access to the places you needed to go, several silt strider transfers mid journey, and the eventual need to leg the last part of the trip to get to where you needed to be.
The continent reminded me very much of my own; Australia. There's cities all around the edge of the landmass, and only danger in the centre. You could, and often did come across enemies that were simply far too powerful for you to defeat at your current level. And the catch was if you did, through bravado or necessity to complete quests, stray too far from towns, there was absolutely no way out of the situation other than limping home, riddled with disease and broken weaponry. But sometimes carrying treasure and powerful items too. Because enemies and items didn't scale in difficulty or power in Morrowind, the chance of stumbling across a sword more powerful than you deserved at your level or mountains of gold was enticing enough that you did want to explore the world, and experience all the risks that came with it. It felt like virtual treasure hunting.
But Morrowind wasn't without its flaws, and when The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was released in 2006 it fixed many of the things that were met with less than glowing praise from the critics and fans. But it also killed everything that made the first game special. And this was all completed through the inclusion of "Fast Travel". Fast travel, in a nutshell, was the ability to open your map, pick a spot and teleport there instantly (although in game time did pass, but this really had little effect on the game's events). There were a few rules, you couldn't fast travel whilst indoors, when enemies were around, or in the air. This kept the system from being exploited, but it didn't keep it from killing your desire for adventure.
Fast Travel means that instead of walking through the visually impressive vistas crafted by Bethesda in the world of Oblivion, we simply teleport. Instead of riding a horse through the wilderness, or strolling along a mountain path or seeing what might be over that next hill, you instantaneously reposition yourself as close as possible to your next goal. This also removes all the excitement of wandering off that beaten path, and searching for that ever illusive weapon that will give you an edge over the world.
And part of this decision is made easier by the fact that the whole world appropriates itself to give you the "best" experience. Wherever you go in Oblivion, the enemies will be an acceptable challenge. This is because both they, and the items they use and drop, scale in power to match your level. One could argue this keeps the game frustration free, but to me this creates a climactic plateau in the game's design. If you never feel out of your depth, your victories are hollow. If there's never a chance to find something wildly rewarding in the game world, you simply stop looking.
Bethesda are removing the joy and wonder of exploration in their games and breaking your sense of immersion at the same time. Oblivion is roughly the same size as Morrowind, but it feels so much smaller. And it's not simply a matter of just not using fast travel, we as humans are programmed to take the path of least resistance, it's a survival mechanism. If fast travel is there, you will eventually use it, and once you start, you won't stop.
In Morrowind, if you got into a tough spot, with no potions, over-incumbered with loot and a shiny sword sitting in front of you in the middle of the continent, you had a personal crisis over what to do. It was a serious situation because you'd have to trek all the way back to a town where you could sell what you had found and hopefully free up enough space in your inventory to collect the sword. Then you'd have to actually make your way back to the weapon (usually by foot) and collect it. It made you think about how much things were worth to you in the game, or plan ahead to make sure you never had to backtrack until you were "done" (you were never done) with your adventure. In Oblivion, you simply leave the cave and fast travel back to a vendor to offload your earnings, fast travel back to that exact spot, pick up the sword and continue on. What was once a forty minute ordeal became a five minute inconvenience. Decisions rarely came with weight and consequence.
In Morrowind, you didn't have a convenient compass that lead you in a straight line directly to quest locations and destinations. You had a rudimentary map, and you had the people around you. The quest would give you a fairly accurate guide on how to complete it, but sometimes you'd have to investigate further to find exactly what you were looking for. NPCs in the game world were useful to you, perhaps they would know where that cave is? Or how to get rid of Vampirism? Or maybe the answer's in a book, one of six novels worth of literature in the game world. Everything had purpose, everything was fully fleshed out.
Do you know how many books I read in Oblivion? One, and only because I was forced to in order to complete a quest. The whole game is spent looking at a quest compass and map, instead of taking in the world around you. You don't need to experience the game anymore.
There's a http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-crucial-lessons-learned-by-watching-kids-play-video-games/, and It's clear these are changes being made to accommodate a more current audience that might not want to deal with these issues that made Morrowind so unique. But it feels like the soul of the franchise has been deadened by its modern touches. There are plenty of games out there that keep things simple for you, that take you down the single path of narrative and scripted explosions, and these games have their place, but why can't Elder Scrolls have its own?
Bethesda clearly realised that scaling enemies was not a good move and have toned it down for the upcoming sequel, Skyrim, but i've seen nothing to indicate that Fast Travel won't be there to murder my sense of wonder and fear like it did in Oblivion.
What's the point of creating an entire world if you don't want people to see it?
