The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

"I still wander Vvardenfell... And I always find something new."

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is an open-ended RPG. No, it's more than that... it's a whole other world. This world is vast, and has detailed cultures and histories that go to work immediately to pull you in and keep you there. It bears the concept of "go wherever you want, do whatever you want." You have no real boundaries; travel across the map, kill a random citizen, become a guild leader, or even save the world.

Graphics: 10/10

Let's start with the graphics. They're what will draw you in to the world the most. The first town you come up in showcases the graphics well. You'll see realistic buildings complimented by smooth texture blends of sand and grass around them. The rocks and trees are nothing less than you'd expect from them in real life, proportioned and shaped properly. Trees and plants in general are a bit lacking, but this is intended to help portray the dark and oppressed type of land you've entered. Trees generally bear little to no leaves, grass is swapped out for dirt, and color is not a plenty; at least, not in this half of the world.

Character models are decent, but a bit lacking. They're blocky and their animations are sloppily done. The face and hair combinations will eventually wear thin, and you'll feel as if you've seen this NPC before somewhere. There are several races in Morrowind, from Humans to Orcs, to Cat-men, and these races each bear unique looks such as skin tone, height, hair color, fur, among other things. You'll also find that people don't just wear the same clothes. In fact, there's a lot of clothes to see. Normal shirts, shorts, pants, robes, helmets, armor, and much more; but that's just the start. Each of these groups have their own army of different colors and designs to help set people apart from each other, and to help you make your character exactly how you envision them. There are a lot of weapons in the game, and I mean a lot. Swords, knives, bows, hammers, maces and more, and they're all just as detailed, and also have countless unique designs among them.

The landscape is the main attraction. It's sculpted so realistically, and the textures for the rock, dirt, grass, lava, ash, and even snow (if you have the Bloodmoon expansion) are good looking and blend perfectly into the environment.

One thing I would like to point out about the world is that it's not just randomly generated; It's hand made. Every rock, tree, bush, everything, it was all slowly placed, one thing at a time until this massive world was complete. This adds a feeling of uniqueness to the world and makes it that much more exciting to explore. The final touch to the effort of making the world beautiful and realistic is the weather. You'll see rain, thunderstorms, ash storms, cloudy days, sunny days, and snow (with the Bloodmoon expansion). The rain can be seen falling drop by drop right in front of your eyes. The Thunderstorms sound extremely real. The sky flashes and lightning appears in the sky; it's so realistic that it's shocked me multiple times. Ash storms are stressful, as they limit your view, filling the screen with ash that flies all around you, and snow... The snow just makes you want to plop on the ground and make a snow angel. You can see each individual snowflake falling around you; all of these weather effects put the finishing touch on the environment, making it intensely realistic.

Enemies also look good. There are a lot of them, too. Each creature has its own detailed model with its own animations. It's quite easy to remember each monster because of this.

Sound: 10/10

I haven't covered everything that makes the world realistic and natural; not by a long shot.

Ambiance
The ambiance is mainly found in the wilderness. You can hear far off creatures howl, the wind blow through your hair, a rushing waterfall nearby... It's breathtaking. The ambiance sounds are incredibly realistic, to the point that you might as well be listening to the real thing. Inside dungeons, caves or tombs you will hear different sounds. Metal clanking together, demonic whispering, and other noises that make exploring these places tense and a bit scary even.

Voices
There are a lot of voice overs for this game. However, you will only hear voice overs as you pass by an NPC, as they greet you, or as you attack an NPC, as they curse you. The dialogue is mainly text. The voices are crisp and well acted. There are unique voices for each race, and separates for male and female. Bethesda also recorded many variations for most lines, making the voice overs much less repetitive.

Combat/General
In combat the sounds are repetitive. There is only one "hit the enemy sound" and one "got hit" sound, so you can see why. There are actually a lot of sounds in the general department. Opening a book, the creaking of a door, a potion bubbling, a torch burning, water splashing, spell casting, pounding a hammer, equipping armor and all other general sounds sound clean and realistic.

Music
The music in Morrowind is breathtaking. From the moment you turn it on, the brilliant theme song starts up; it's enough to make most people tear up in amazement. Each song is just as good, too. There are about 5 "exploration" songs in the game. These songs play when you are roaming about the world. They are all long and great enough to not be repetitive, even after hundreds of hours of gameplay. There are a few songs for "combat," which play while you are fighting an enemy. These songs do well at getting you excited about the fight. Then, there are "special" songs, such as the "accomplishment" song that plays when you level up, or the "death song." Both sound just as good.

Controls: 10/10

The controls are smooth, and even if you don't like them, they're 100% changeable. The menus can even be re-sized to your preference; everything is completely customizable.


Story

This is what truly makes Morrowind a whole other world.

Main Quest
The Main Quest is the main storyline of the game, that you can play through if you choose. In it, you work as Caius Cassades', a Blades operative, assistant. I don't want to spoil anything, so I really can't say more, except that the Main Quest is a bit cliche, but is done very well. I find it to be exciting, even after already completing it once.

Backstory
This is pretty much every other thread of story in the game. The province of Vvardenfell is packed with backstory, for every city, faction, House, religion, race, creature, and even many famous NPCs. You can go to a city and study its history, how it was founded, hard times it had. You can go to a Guild and learn about its history too, and learn about the current members. Religions are detailed and believable, with hundreds of followers spread about. Each race has a huge history that can be learned, though the Dunmer are the center of attention in Morrowind. Nearly everything has an origin, an interesting past, troubling times, or maybe just little insignificant details that are interesting to read about too.

Gameplay: 10/10

The famous Elder Scrolls gameplay. As mentioned early on, you are free to do whatever you want to do in Elder Scrolls games, and more than ever in Morrowind. You are never bound to one location or quest, you can go to any city or ruin and help whoever, kill whoever, steal whatever, explore wherever you want. There are multiple ways for all situations. Need a better sword? Buy one, steal one, kill that rude Orc for his. Need to go all the way to Balmora? Take a Silt Strider, walk, or even teleport. You can spend your time doing quests for people, exploring the vast world, becoming the most famous outlaw in the land, mastering skills, becoming rich, moving to the head of guilds, and more.

When you first start your character, you choose the Race. Each race has its own benefits over other races that might drastically change the difficulty of certain aspects of the game. Next you choose your class. You have three options here: One, choose from a bunch of questions, allowing the game to choose a class based on your personality. Two, choose from a long list of preset classes to suit your intended play style. Or three, create your very own class, by choosing five major and minor skills, and which attributes to focus on. There are limitless possibilities, and hundreds of different kinds of classes can be made, making Morrowind extremely replayable. You even get to choose a sign, which is a special perk, such as having a significant increase to your speed, or having a nifty unlock level 50 locks power that can be used once a day.

Though you choose these major and minor skills and your focused attributes, you are still very open to change. You can train in any skill in the game and master it regardless of your initial build, but your build simply makes choosing which direction to go easier. To train in a skill, you can either practice it (like using a long sword to kill monsters to higher your Long Sword skill, or healing yourself with magic to higher your Restoration skill) or you can find a Trainer and pay for lessons in that skill. After a major or minor skill increases, it adds one point to your level. When you have ten points, you rest in a bed, and your level increases by one. You are allowed to increase three attributes by one, but the attributes you mainly trained in have bonuses, like adding 2-5 points.

The higher a skill is, the easier it is to preform that skill's action. If your Long Blade skill is high, you have a better chance of hitting your opponent with a long sword. If your Restoration skill is high, you have a better chance of casting a healing spell. Combat is somewhat frustrating and dull because of this however. When you first start out, your character's, even major Weapon or Magic skills, will be pretty low, meaning you miss or fail at casting spells a lot. Combat is much better a while into the game as you level, and becomes much more fun.

Amongst the other skills are some like Speed, Alchemy, and Acrobatics. Speed increases the speed you run at, and Acrobatics increases how high you jump, making it easier to travel. Alchemy allows you to create your own potions, which makes it much easier to survive. Alchemy isn't the only skill like this; enchantment and repair allow you to enchant your own items (adding magical attributes to them) or repair them on your own, without seeking aid from NPCs in town. Your character can depend on either himself or others. To enchant an item, you must take a soul gem, and trap a soul within it. Then bind it to an item. You need repair hammers to keep equipment in good shape.

Going back to combat, Magic is built a bit lackingly. In order to cast a spell, you have to switch to Magic mode, which makes combat slow and even makes it a bit dangerous to be a mage in most cases. Most spells have Scroll duplicates which allow characters based more on might to cast spells, by reading the scrolls off. Blocking is also a bit broken. To block, you equip a shield, and your character blocks as you raise your weapon. This is hard to adjust to.

Next, quests. Quests are very varied. They don't all pertain to bringing an item to someone, or killing someone. They branch off into more complicated tasks, and are almost always made more interesting by backstory and side opportunities. There are free-lance quests you can take from random NPCs, and then there are Factions. There are a few of them; The Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, Morag Tong Guild, and there are even Great Houses to be affiliated with. Each of these bring their own long branch of quests, each more fun that the last. You can master nearly all guilds/factions and rise to the rank of Guildmaster, which is satisfying. Joining a faction also changes the way people see you. People in opposing factions will like you less, while your reputation in town will increase as people hear of the good deeds you have committed for the guild. "Reputation" is one of the factors that determines how much someone will like you, aside from your personality and bounty. You can use speechcraft to change the way people feel about you, or even bribe them, to get what you need out of them. Talking to people can bring you a lot of information, such as locations of certain people or places, new quests, or just Morrowind's lore.

There is so much content in Morrowind, that it is unlikely that any one person will ever complete everything the game offers.

Mods

After enjoying the masterpiece that is TESIII:Morrowind, you can look to mods. Bethesda packaged most versions of the game with The Elder Scrolls Construction Kit, which was used to make the game; that should show you how much freedom you have. Absolutely everything can be changed in the game, or you can even make your very own Morrowind. The Modding community is huge and still very active, so even after you've done all you wanted to in Morrowind, you can always download some more quests to beat, or guilds to master, or weapons to buy...

Replayability

The game as mentioned in the Gameplay section allows for an incredibly in-depth character creation process, making each play-through different. Not to mention the several different paths you can take with everything else in the game.

Summary

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is one of the greatest video games of all time, featuring a vast world with an epic story behind it. You owe it to yourself to play it, and it's dirt cheap these days, at 15-20 dollars. Do yourself a favor and buy it, and lose yourself in the land of Vvardenfell with the rest of us.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/24/09

Game Release: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (US, 05/02/02)