i like modern games- nice graphics. but i also love older chunkier graphics they have a certain charm to it.
and in some cases i am against better graphics!
[WARNING]: long rant of proboly the biggest TESIII Morrowind fanboy ever, which argues the superiority of inferior graphics if done right.
Lower poly/ low res texture 3D can really work to a games advantage. (the most obvvios one is less demanding hardware)
but what i want to mention is in my opinion really interesting.
2002 The Elder Scrolls III Morrowind- (biggest influence in my life- this game turned my life in a whole new direction, i am whe ere i am right now is because of Morrowind.. Oh those wasted years of playing MW were some of the best years in my life)
anyway. the graphics were directX8. DX9 just came out. Water is the only thing in the game that had pixel shaders 2.0- the most advanced shaders at that time. (also they did such a great job with the pixel shaded water that it actually looked good and didnt stand out like it didnt belong there despite of the fact that other than water nothing else had shaders, I think its because the pixel shader color pallete matched the general grey/ dark/ washed out depressing color theme of morrowind.
most of morrowind is kinda like this
this is one of the more colorful and less depressing parts, still looks pretty rugged with those trees
anyway, the graphics were pretty chunky and polygony by todays standards but this actually worked very well because the rough edgy low poly surfaces, items, rocks, trees etc really underlined the whole atmosphere of morrowind itself. Morrowind is a harsh rugged barren wasteland (well most of the island is a wasteland). Everything about morrowind is harsh, rugged, unhappy, unwelcoming and alien. And the low polygon graphics added to this atmosphere and i think it madegame atmosphere better, or it helped underline the depressive rugged atmosphere. My point is, morrowind benefited a lot more from low poly graphics and better graphics would only make the game look worse. As for textures,which were also pretty low res for our time, that also worked extremeley well. First of all theysomehow added to the rugged looks of things like armour ground and buildings. Also low res textures, complimented the uncolorful depressing colors of Morrowind, most of which is dark grey, most of the colors feel a bit saturated, washed out- complete absence of strong bright happy colors. (morrowind weather most of the island is almost always grey/overcast/cloudy, i played for a few days and actually got depressed and when i saw the sun and the sky for the first time in a month, i was so happy). Anyway low res textures work extremeley well too- same principle as low poly graphics.
As mods started to come out, a lot of people started replacing MW content with higher res texstured, happier colored and higher poly stuff. (depressing MW atmosphere was so effective, people were bent on making MW look more bright, cheerfull and happy lol-painted the city of Vivek in bright colors, made the ground/sky, more coloful, some added more grass, and even one mod covered the grey MW wasteland with trees, grass and other flora.) Immediatley items of these better graphics mods stand out too much and look like they dont fit in with the surroundings.
left: dark rugged depressing MW, right: a bit more happy and colorful MW
One of the absolute worst examples i can think of is better bodies and better heads mod. Original MW graphics depicted MW inhabitants as rather skinny malnorished, unhealthy bodies and thin faces. Low polycount of those bodies, made it look like you could see charecters bones stick out a little as there is no fat between the skin and bone (just some muscule). Dark Elves (Dunmer)-natives of morrowind even look more anorexic than all other races. Add their grey skin to the unhealthy anorexic look, just makes them look pretty badass considering the fact that despite of their looks they can still kick your ass.
just seeing a MW dunmer, one can proboly reach a conclusion that he/she is a MW native by their worn down body complexion. (btw Oblivion ruined Dunmer, it made them fatter more healthy looking, gave them stuck up snobby personalities and snobby voices replacing the scary rugged voices turning them from badass wasteland wonderers and lowering dunmer almost to the level of a Bosmer. i lost all respect for dunmer in OB. The only exeption is the dunmer lady in the "Morrowind tavern" in cyrodill. She is all for the savage violent lifestyle of dunmer lol)
Look at this dude, he is totally badass! i cant remember anything nearly as badass as this from oblivion at all.
now look at this guy...V
now look back at this guy>
oblivion dunmer again kinda fat looking.
i dont get it, dumer were so awesome looking in MW and had awesome voices and oblivion, they all look fat and their voices suck
Anyway I thought that actually made a lot of sence as morrowind, is a harsh alien world, with horrible dust storms and sandstorms that carry a horrible blight didease. MW is generally ravages by many kinds of diseases, most of the island is a barren wasteland of volcanic ash, lack of good fertile farming land making vegetables and good healthy food somewhat of a luxury in MW. so most people eat unhelthy foods, harsh meat of harsh MW animals (many of which also carry diseases) who are adapted to the harsh environment of MW anda small verioty of rather eatible flora that somehow adapted to growing in the ash despite of ashlands being overcast all the time (cant have photosynthesis, but the plants in that climate seemed to have some weird version if it since leaves of ash plants are brown/dark red) this explaines why almost everyone in MW is really skinny/ low poly unhealthy looking- its the enviroment.
Anyway Better bodies/ heads replaced the skinny worn down, malnurished MW residents with Well fed, musculy great physique and perfect body figures. (Please note i didnt say supermodel bodies because supermodels are skinny and anorexic and will work great in MW). the models were good and high quality, but they looked really bad and out of place in MW.
the original look vs
see what i am saying? the original has more charecter, the polished one looked too clean and perfect and fake in my opinion.
Another Morrowind example i remembered was both inspiring and dissapointing. When TESIV oblivion came out, shortly this french guy made this app, that takes all morrowind 3d media, converted it to oblivion engine format and reconstructs the entire playable morrowind inside of oblivion (if you had mods/ expansions custom textures, it will convert those to OB as well, well the media/npcs/monsters at least if you had a quest mod, the quest wont be converted
)
This was pretty much the coolest thing ever (too bad the developer quit a long time ago). You could pretty much, go to morrowind from oblivion with your charecter and run around in nearly complete morrowind/solthiem area. The sky, water, player, monsters were all oblivion based (prolly didnt get around to converting NPCs/ monsters) (also original MW monster were cooler! Daedroth guys wore PANTS! how cool is that? MW Flame Antonarchs were bigger and a lot scarier than oblivions.
morrowind badass flame demon
in my opinion oblivions for some reason look less sxcary even kinda cute for some reason
i remember seeing my first one in Morrowind, it didnt even notice me yet but i already ran as fast as i could out of the dungeon screaming from that thing lol. Well ok, oblivion Demora looked badass, but i think they ripped off Saurons look a bit with OB) However Weapons armour and even clothing which you could all equip with your OB charecter, were all original morrowind dx8 content. Since the oblivion DX9 high detail charecter might look bad on a dx8 unshaded MW wearing morrowind clothing armor (which actually fit OB model very accuratley) helped OB charecter/NPCs blend in more with the morrowind backround.
I also would like to mention, that Spears /staves from MW were handeled just like 2 handed longswords in OB and looked really great as a weapon when fighting.
i even made a video of this afterntrying this mod
(at 5:08 fighting with a spear i thought the spear fighting looks really cool)
The mod was almost complete, every morrowind aspect even clutter was converted to OB exept for NPCs which all had the same face for each race and no conversation options but their names and locations were all accurate to the original MW. And there was no main quest.
the most annoying part of this conversion in my opinion, is the ground texture conversion. original MW ground textures were pretty large squares and looked natural. Hard to spot any repeating textures. OB engine ruined that since the OB ground textures are smaller more repeating squares (hidden by 3d grass). morrowind terrain textures downsided to oblivion format made morrowind ground textures look bad causing a lot of visible repeating terrain textures.
Anyway, this thing was great but now the dissapointing part. First of all, the french developer of this conversion, quit. Then it was a known fact that Bethesda didnt like this kind of stuff at all, like converting morrowind content to oblivion and would proboly block the mods release on most if not all popular TES mod sites. so if this mod would get released, it would be on some closed forum or uploaded to a torrent tracker. (at the time when this thing came out i joined such forum to help with development) And to my final dissapointment, when this project went mainstream, they started the process of slowly replacing the original morrowind content with custom modded and oblivion content. MW bonemold armour sets came out first and i was horrified by their looks.
another example why low poly low res is better: Original low polygon/ low resolution bonemold armour in morrowind, looked kinda chunky, rugged, imperfect, really seemed like it is made out of bone and the ruggedness of DX8 graphics again, complemented rugged morrowind setting.
original armor
new morrowblivion armor
the original one looks more legit and just looks more badass
The newly modeled high poly/ high res bonemold armour model was a good quality model, i cant argue. BUT! it looked WAAY TO PERFECT. it was smooth, colors were clearer and it just didnt have nearly that same level of ruggedness as original one, didnt really look like it was made out of bone,... it looked FAKE. Then Morrowblivion project even replaced the MW landmass with a less accurate custommodded one. and pretty much started building this out oblivion content and content made specifically for oblivion. The Project slowly started looking all coloful, happy and cheerfull loosing any sign, of the awesome MW atmosphere which i love so much. i ended up quitting the forum. (i did help out before a bit with some construction set work).
i really wish they kept the original graphics because, this morrowblivion project, was everything, i (and any other MW fanboy) wished morrowind had, such as oblivion physics, great fighting/ magic/stealth systems and the dynamic Radiant AI, if added into morrowind which had a lot more content than oblivion, it would have been an insanley awesome game in my opinion better than oblivion. MW unfourtunatley had a bad fighting, system, worse stealth system, very boaring basic AI and no physics. I guess this is all because they dont want Bethesda to get angry at them for violating their policies. Maybe Beths policies do make sence if the case was that the copywrite/ trademark registry agreement thing (i dont know what its called but you get the point) for morrowind, was different from the one in oblivion. I might be wrong about this, but the current Bethesda CEO/Director/main designer guy- Steve Howard, got the ceo position during Oblivion which he owns the copywrit to and morrowind is owned by a previos ceo and they dont want this type of mod because it would get mixed up on who gets payed for which content as they are different copywrits but people are mixing their content....
dont hate people who rip you off,cheat and get away with it, learn from them
