Thursday, August 18, 2011

Retroview - The Elder Scroll III: Marrowind

So The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim is about to be released and I'm actually very excited about it.  Why did I say "actually"?  Because I was never to big of a fan of The Elder Scroll Series and didn't even know about it until Marrowind came out.  As the years go by, I have matured a lot as a gamer and am more tolerant to games that require a lot of reading and patience.  Because of that, I really got into immersive RPGs.  With Skyrim about to come out and hearing how great Marrowind and Oblivion was, I finally bought Oblivion and tried it out.  Aside from the game crashing a lot and being over-encumbered without knowing how to drop items, I started to like Oblivion more and more.  With my new interest in The Elder Scroll series, I decided to seek out Marrowind to give that one a try as well.

Source: Youtube Channel AxelNL1994

I found a used copy of Marrowind at a local game store and the guy working there offered the game for $2 for me since we weren't sure if a CD key was needed for it from it's original $5.  Seeing how that's a great deal to check the game out, I bought it (it's $20 on Steam, so I didn't bother buying it there).  I installed it and tried it out and I was actually impressed with the graphics for it being released in 2002.  And then I started playing the game.

After an entire hour, I had talked to the people I needed to, killed a worm, 2 rats, and walked to another town while having to switch between walk and run because running takes up stamina which recovers VERY slowly.  I don't know how all the Marrowind fans played through the game, it's so very very slow!  I do like the immersion aspects of the game (which is why I started liking the series) as well as the many customizations you can do with your character's attributes, but I'm not too keen on spending 100 hours of doing a lot of walking.  Oblivion is a lot like that too, and I guess it's part of the "journey".  Oblivion does feel a lot more easier and noob friendly compared to Marrowind with voice overs so that you don't have to read several thousand passages.  I remember my biggest first complaint about Oblivion was how slow I moved.  I remedied that with the sign and class I created to make me move faster.  I unfortunately decided to go with a pure spellcaster on Marrowind and I'm slow as a mule because of it.  Oblivion does feel like quite a leap from Marrowind and I probably don't mind putting in 100+ hours for it, but I'm not sure if I want to do that for Marrowind.  It just doesn't seem worth it at the moment (remember, I have a 100+ game backlogged).  But Marrowind itself is a huge leap from the first two in the series which was played on MS DOS.  I'm eventually going to try those out too, but most likely won't be able to finish it.  I may not even be able to finish Marrowind because of how long it might take (and how slow it feels).  I have seen several videos where players have beaten the game in less than 10 minutes.  I'm not sure if I'm able to do the same.  Perhaps I shall try if I end up not being able to get through the game with my mage (the speed runners went with assassin-type classes that give them a total of 65+ speed or something like that).  Well, just Marrowind and Oblivion itself is holding me down pretty well until Skyrim comes out, and I highly doubt I'll get it on the first day with my crazy backlog of games (I'm excited for it, but not desperate).

Also, it seems as though I'll be getting Skyrim on PS3 as I want to play it in its full glory of beautiful graphics.  The problem is, I feel as if The Elder Scroll series should be played on a PC.  It feels more natural to play on a PC, but I won't have a strong enough computer to play it on its highest settings.  I wonder how many hours Skyrim will eventually take out of me?  Anyways, those who want to try out Marrowind must have an open mind and have a LOT of patience (emphasis on "a LOT").

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