The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

"Unique in many ways - but those are one of the shortcomings."

It’s an incredible thing to know that this game could ever achieve tons of good reviews and comments around. I was blatantly shocked to know that The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind achieved a high rating of 5 out of 5 in the show Extended Play at TechTV, possibly the highest and most honourable rating that could ever be given out to any game. Of course, there will be a conflict of opinions, and what I’m going to review and say will be based on what I think about Morrowind overall.

Graphics – 7.3
Are these graphics powered by an excellent computer with a first-rate graphics card?

Oh my goodness, the graphics are terribly dull with absolutely no colour sense at all, except dashes of brown here and there and different colours in different places. I must say the lighting effects (shown here in the sun) are somewhat impressive, but other than that, the whole thing falls short. The background is okay, nothing exceptionally amazing – in the cities or towns that is. But if you go outside that dull clutter of buildings, where you’ll enter forest, everything looks nice; like while walking, those trees ahead will slowly appear before you, and the shining sun in your face.

The faces look like blocks of wood; totally unreal at all, ugly in fact, even though you had given the choice of choosing your own face from the tons of choices given, for each different species of living organism. The buildings are shades of the dullest constructions in existence in any known game, and if you look inside the buildings, I don’t see anything stupendous at all.

Perhaps natural elements like water, trees, plants and others are the only thing that could be credited for.

Music – 5.1
Ever noticed that the music sounds the same throughout the game?

Horrifyingly dull, uninteresting, tedious and monotonous – words that I will describe the background music. Actually, it seems that the same music will keep playing throughout the game, except when fighting against enemies where the music will change into some rapidly fast beat. Sound effects, I can’t say much. It’s like unsuccessful tries of trying to put together the best sound effect for some magic, and it doesn’t sound realistic at all, as what other reviews mentioned about Morrowind being realistic. Oh puh-lease. The voices are okay, though you will certainly notice that some voices for some villagers sound exactly the same.

Gameplay – 6.2
Different than normal RPGs, unique in characters classing but hideous in quality of gameplay.

Oh yes, I do agree that this game is unique in a lot of ways, but have you noticed that this game tries to be too unique? The thing I must compliment is about the choice you can make on your character, something like online games like Phantasy Star Online, where you will be able to select your characters’ face, gender, type and name. There are 10 different races (like High Elf), 21 types of classes (like Mage) and even birth-signs (like The Lady, for example), which are quite a lot. Different faces for different races and different genders; yes, quite a lot but they look ugly, except perhaps the exceptional few. And yeah, you can create your own custom class like what you like your character to be good in which type of skill, etc.

The magic system is different of course – as if this game stressed itself to be unique - with a totally wide selection of magic spells that you will be able to acquire. This game is so big, in terms of world and environments, weapons, armors, magic and other miscellaneous items that it’s hard to keep track of everything. You can upgrade your magic with certain people to be amazingly strong, in a wider range and in a longer time, but with an even amazingly costly price.

And yeah, depending on your characters’ Athletics skill or something of that sort, your character (mine actually, a High Elf) in the beginning will walk terribly slow, even if you make him or her run. It’s even slower than an ant dashing, and it’s terribly annoying to move about anywhere. And since I was new to the game, I got stuck in some oversized forest and finally got my way out by running at a snail's pace after an hour or so.

That’s right, there’s this convenient system of stamina or energy, where whenever you strike with your weapon or magic, or even run, it will drain your energy bar. The less the energy, the slower you’ll be in whatever you’ll be doing. And then the usual thing in RPGs, where you’ll get a health bar and a Magicka bar, obviously the normal magic bar.

Maybe I should stop addressing this game as an RPG, it’s a hybrid of RPG and action/adventure, which again, this game is unique of. I don’t like the idea of a first-person view mode (which you can change to a third-person view), which looks more like normal shooting games like Serious Sam or Counterstrike.

The areas in this game is simply too wide, and I was heaving a sigh of relief after reaching my destination on spending more than an hour walking around in circles in a huge forest (I missed having to ride on a stilt-rider of some sort, which I have to pay a small amount of money out of the miniscule amount of money I’m holding). There are dangerous caves filled with bandits and weird creatures and even some graves that contained evil spirits and vampires. And the logic of this game is to have small creatures such as rat to be even able to attack you; that is scary.

The attacking system is something that I want to complain. After testing out various types of weapon (short ones like dagger and long ones like a blade of some sort), I found out (I’m not sure whether I’m right or not) that you’ll need to be at some distance from the enemy, depending on the type of weapon you choose, in order to strike and hurt it. Talk about realism – this is absolutely difficult to play in this game.

Replay Value – 7.1
I’m not sure, almost no one will ever replay an RPG game, let alone Morrowind. But with the implementation of a program called The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, where you’ll be able to customize simply almost everything in the game, from magic to characters to areas, you might have a lot of fun if you have the patience to do it, which I have not.

Overall – 5.0
And the obvious verdict...

This game is absolutely not for those who are used to the normal basic hack-and-slash RPG game; Final Fantasy games are a good example. Morrowind gets too repetitive and tedious, and the surprise is the lack of good dialogue in the game, where almost everyone common will say the same thing, and when you ask something, it will be the same reply - not even a change of some words or sentences. The tediousness of this game is so obvious; though I don’t know whether you’d welcome hunting for certain mushrooms in the forest which is something that you may come across while playing.

So to cap it all once more, you’ll need to have a high-end processor with a good graphics card to put this game to the fullest. Next is to check out the game and verify the gameplay to see whether it’s good for you or not. If not, you might as well regret ever buying this game and curse the person (or media) who introduced you to this.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 08/04/02, Updated 08/04/02