Yet Another Morrowind Thread

[Carrion]

Any ideas on unstucking NPCs? I have to escort a kajiit slave named Rabinna and she's stuck in Hla Oad.

Try putting this in the console:

PlaceAtPC "Rabinna",1,1,1

That should teleport her right in front of you. There's also the ResetActors command that puts every NPC to their original location, but I don't know if that causes issues with some quests.

 

[DraQ]

However, the dialogue in Skyrim still flows completely unnaturally

It's still bethesda dialogue.

The again, you don't play bethesda games to converse with NPCs.

Any ideas on unstucking NPCs? I have to escort a kajiit slave named Rabinna and she's stuck in Hla Oad.

Try putting this in the console:

PlaceAtPC "Rabinna",1,1,1

That should teleport her right in front of you.

Copy, you mean.

 

[moraes]

Copy, you mean.

Oh my, there should be at least five Rabinnas walking around Morrowind right now.

Anyway, I was supposed to take her to the Argonian Mission in Ebonheart so she could be protected from slavers. Of course the script did not fire up and my efforts where not acknowledged. So instead I take her to the slaver in Balmora. His house is locked and I have no key, so I cast open, even though I'm bringing a present. Same thing: script not working/implemented/whatever. I proceed to kill him in cold blood while Rabinna stares. I loot his corpse. Then I kill Rabinna and loot some 30 units of Moon Sugar that where placed inside her tummy by drug traffickers.

Life is cold in Morrowind.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Isn't the slaver in Hla Oad? (Nevermind, you pick her up in Hla Oad) I don't remember having to pick the door to meet him, either.

 

[DraQ]

The best course of action would *have* been, in that order:

1. trying to get Rabinna unstuck conventionally - AI in follower mode generally seems to follow a sequence of waypoints you drop while moving, first you need it to stop, by approaching close, then you should try getting it to follow you in different directions.

2. levitating Rabinna and getting her to follow you a bit upward, clear the obstacle and get her to follow you back to the ground.

3. using TCL to let Rabinna walk through any obstacle or terrain, then using TCL again to toggle the collision back on. TCL may make other NPCs casually stroll into obstacles or under terrain so this is the least recommended of recommended options. Still, I imagine that quickly following the second TCL with RA should reset all the stray NPCs stuck in scenery, as long as they didn't die stupid by falling somewhere. RA alone only resets those NPCs who are native to the cell, present in it and alive, so its utility is limited in such cases.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

All voiced in OB was so unbearably shit that I still can't believe it worked.

At least Skyrim improved on that model by moving towards more Fallout-y approach - a handful of NPCs bearing most of the dialogue in game (individualized and more substantial than in lolblivion), and majority of people not interested in holding conversations with a murderhobo.
It's still inferior for an open-world game where you might want to ask a random passerby WTF is a foyada ice-wraith, but it works sort of ok for a game not focused on dialogue and emoshunal engagement.

IDK I think "Rumors" topic was a nice thing, and the only topic possible anyway (MW's "Latest rumors" were more about some advices regading behavior iirc).

What would make Skyrim's model better would be NPCs, instead of having a single fixed "Do you get to the Cloud District very often" or "you can just call me erikur's sister, everyone does", actually making use of Guard model -- that, "arrow to the knee" aside, actually incorporated the "Rumors" in it by i.e. marking some locations on the map, or commenting on some changes/PC behavior.

 

[Caim]

Another fun thing I recently discovered about Morrowind is that it does not give a fuck about you doing certain things in it when you are not yet supposed to.

Mainly, the Pilgrimage of the Four Corners. As long as you do them in the right order (four Daedra hearts for the shrine west of Dagon Fel then visit Ald Sotha, Bal Ur and Ald Daedroth) you can go to Mount Assarnibibi and get the Ebony Mail without doing the Temple quest line or meeting any other requirements.

And the quest with the lost ebony mine: if you report it to the guy in the Saint Olms canton you can get a Daedric weapon at level 1.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Weird thing is, I am often derping around in cities and I rarely hear the "arrow to the knee" dialogue.

 

[Commissar Draco]

They Fixored Guards in latest patch? They don't laugh at PC and call him mead boy when He's harbinger instead pointing to some epic and heroic stuff he did. Might be one of unofficial patches too. To be honest though since buying the mansion not much reasons to visit cities after completing quests though.

 

[Delterius]

All voiced in OB was so unbearably shit that I still can't believe it worked.

At least Skyrim improved on that model by moving towards more Fallout-y approach - a handful of NPCs bearing most of the dialogue in game (individualized and more substantial than in lolblivion), and majority of people not interested in holding conversations with a murderhobo.
It's still inferior for an open-world game where you might want to ask a random passerby WTF is a foyada ice-wraith, but it works sort of ok for a game not focused on dialogue and emoshunal engagement.

I heard, however, that the amount of topics you can converse with aren't diminished when only compared to Morrowind, but also Oblivion. Wouldn't that and less NPCs with dialogue mean and even more of an amazing setback?

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Well, I'll take NPCs with less but unique dialogue than walking wikipedias.

 

[Delterius]

Those aren't mutually exclusive, you know. Locals who know local lore and are willing to talk about it + more interesting NPCs like Vivec. If anything, I think that too much of the more interesting lore of Morrowind is conveyed exclusively through books. However, interesting NPCs isn't the same as NPCs with unique dialogue, if anything the former isn't abundant in Skyrim.

What is mutually exclusive, I think, is abundant NPC dialogue that is both interesting and informative and voice acting.

 

[sea]

I heard, however, that the amount of topics you can converse with aren't diminished when only compared to Morrowind, but also Oblivion. Wouldn't that and less NPCs with dialogue mean and even more of an amazing setback?

To be fair, a lot of Oblivion's dialogue was a complete waste, i.e. asking random NPCs who had zero purpose in quests, story, game world etc. about their jobs and having them deliver some retarded crap that wasn't worth the time to listen to. Skyrim tends to focus on things that are actually relevant without wasting time on pointless filler.

 

[Delterius]

I heard, however, that the amount of topics you can converse with aren't diminished when only compared to Morrowind, but also Oblivion. Wouldn't that and less NPCs with dialogue mean and even more of an amazing setback?

To be fair, a lot of Oblivion's dialogue was a complete waste, i.e. asking random NPCs who had zero purpose in quests, story, game world etc. about their jobs and having them deliver some retarded crap that wasn't worth the time to listen to. Skyrim tends to focus on things that are actually relevant without wasting time on pointless filler.

I hadn't thought of that possibility. That does make Skyrim a more focused experience that doesn't compare badly to the other fully VO'd TES. But just to make sure of something else: is there no way this filler is 'redeemable' as 'fleshing out the gameworld'?

 

[sea]

I hadn't thought of that possibility. That does make Skyrim a more focused experience that doesn't compare badly to the other fully VO'd TES. But just to make sure of something else: is there no way this filler is 'redeemable' as 'fleshing out the gameworld'?

Not really. The dialogue is so bland and predictable that it's nothing you can't figure out from the visuals (i.e. I don't need John Vineyard-Owner to tell me he runs a winery), and the lore in Oblivion is itself so uninteresting that it's not like you're losing out on much if anything. Most of the lore is confined to the major quest lines anyway, not random NPCs on the street (unlike Morrowind).

 

[Lancehead]

Well, I'll take NPCs with less but unique dialogue than walking wikipedias.

The walking wikipedias let the player take the initiative to find out about anything. Whereas in Skyrim the player has to look up the map markers. Makes a big difference to quest design.

 

[Crevice tab]

Well, I'll take NPCs with less but unique dialogue than walking wikipedias.

The walking wikipedias let the player take the initiative to find out about anything. Whereas in Skyrim the player has to look up the map markers. Makes a big difference to quest design.

In all fairness this is a quest design problem and not something related with the dialogue approach. The way Skyrim deals with dialogue isn't inherently bad in fact it's quite good for the fully voiced approach. The problem is the way Skyrim deals with quests and the stupid gimmicky shit like the skill comments that takes away resources from quest lore and other important bits.

 

[DraQ]

I heard, however, that the amount of topics you can converse with aren't diminished when only compared to Morrowind, but also Oblivion. Wouldn't that and less NPCs with dialogue mean and even more of an amazing setback?

The thing is Skyrim's dialogue is unevenly distributed.

In Oblivion pretty much every NPC has 1-2 unique lines, but since pretty much every NPC has not much to say and since people who wrote their dialogue apparently were never told to not snack on paint chips almost all dialogue is wasted on retarded and inane shit that you'll want to blow your brains out after three such conversations tops:

(redacted, but you can read original subtitles, and the overall impression is spot-on).

In Skyrim most NPCs don't have any sort of dialogue, just audio barks, most of the rest have a bare minimum of topics if they actually have something to say, and few have quite a handful of informative ones.

 

[Delterius]

(redacted, but you can read original subtitles, and the overall impression is spot-on).

Holy shit, sea was understating it.

EDIT: So I have a question DraQ Clockwork Knight and etc. What if there were both kinds of dialogue? An informative topic based if generic way to ask people about local lore and the dialogue 'trees' that advance the plots?

 

[DraQ]

(redacted, but you can read original subtitles, and the overall impression is spot-on).

Holy shit, sea was understating it.

EDIT: So I have a question DraQ Clockwork Knight and etc. What if there were both kinds of dialogue? An informative topic based if generic way to ask people about local lore and the dialogue 'trees' that advance the plots?

Why not?

The thing is that if they insist on making everything voiced
(herpity derp) then it's important to make every word of resulting scant dialogue count.

 

[Sceptic]

EDIT: So I have a question DraQ Clockwork Knight and etc. What if there were both kinds of dialogue? An informative topic based if generic way to ask people about local lore and the dialogue 'trees' that advance the plots?

Morrowind already had this, it just didn't have a way to distinguish between generic topics and specific topics for most NPCs. But for some the topics did work a bt like trees (well, more like the U7 keywords) in that one keyword would open up additional ones, and so on. All you really needed there to get the system you wanted is something like a different colour for "advance-the-plot" keywords. TBH once I got used to it I didn't mind MW's system, because all I needed to do was look through the keywords and then click the ones that were relevant, ignoring all the fluff ones if I didn't feel like getting a random lore dump.

 

[DraQ]

But for some the topics did work a bt like trees (well, more like the U7 keywords) in that one keyword would open up additional ones, and so on.

More than that - if (and only if) there was an actual dialogue choice involved you'd get red coloured lines to choose from instead of just blue coloured highlights for keywords in text, and such choices could be nested or have all sorts of condition checks attached, forming a full-fledged dialogue tree.
It was used sparringly but at least you didn't have to click "I'd like to ask about something else" over and over again.

 

[Jugashvili]

The worst part is that listening to those NPCs who do have something to say about lore in Oblivion implies having to endure line after line of cringeworthy, stilted voice acting, with the subtitles added sentence by sentence so you can't skim through them quickly and get to the point, for what feels like aeons. It makes me want to end it all. No, I'll take Excel spreadsheets any day and just read what I want.

 

[Turjan]

The worst part is that listening to those NPCs who do have something to say about lore in Oblivion implies having to endure line after line of cringeworthy, stilted voice acting, with the subtitles added sentence by sentence so you can't skim through them quickly and get to the point, for what feels like aeons. It makes me want to end it all. No, I'll take Excel spreadsheets any day and just read what I want.

To be fair, you can at least interrupt the voice acting and jump to the next sentence as quickly as you want.

 

[DraQ]

The worst part is that listening to those NPCs who do have something to say about lore in Oblivion implies having to endure line after line of cringeworthy, stilted voice acting, with the subtitles added sentence by sentence so you can't skim through them quickly and get to the point, for what feels like aeons. It makes me want to end it all. No, I'll take Excel spreadsheets any day and just read what I want.

To be fair, you can at least interrupt the voice acting and jump to the next sentence as quickly as you want.

It might postpone the moment when you break the DVD and try to slice your jugulars with two handfuls of shards too.

Think about it - you won't even be able to think "sweet oblivion" as you fade into the void.