"Beautiful, varied, rich and life absorbing!"

Morrowind is the third game in Bethedsa software's highly successful range of Elder Scrolls games.
It is an RPG that presents you with nearly limitless choices and gameplay, and features one of the largest worlds in a game ever to explore.

You start off in a prison ship, recently released and ready to start life a new. You arrive in the port town of Seyda Neen and from here you can choose your characters appearance, skills and magic.
As far as character development goes, Morrowind is truly amazing. It allows you to select to be one of many races, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
From there you can then choose your skills.
You can choose to have Major, Minor and Miscellaneous skills.
There is a large range of skills to choose from, and using them you can tailor any sort of character. From a thief to a mage or knight, and much more. Also, you can specialize in different skills you didn't choose early on. Say I want to specialize in daggers, but I didn't select that as a skill, I can still learn it, only it will be harder for me to learn. Skills go up levels depending on their use. So to level up say, axe skills, I would have to successfully use my axe. It really is an innovative system and allows you to truly choose the sort of character that suits your play style.
Aside from this you also have base skills, such as strength, agility, endurance, personality, luck, intelligence, willpower and speed. These all have a different outcome on your player.

Probably one of my biggest problems with Morrowind is the speed at which your character walks. Luckily this can be changed as you level up, but from the start of the game it is rather painful how slow the character moves. Especially when you consider how much walking you will do. The problem is alleviated some what by the many methods of transport within the world, including by boat or strange land roaming creatures known as silt striders. You can even use magic spells that allow you to leap great distances.
Morrowind is set in the world of 'Vvardenfell' an island that is quite literally, ENORMOUS. There is just so much to see and do that at first it all may seem daunting. You could literally spend weeks exploring the world; it's just that big. There are over thirty towns to explore and hundreds of NPC's to talk to.
The world itself looks absolutely amazing on high-end systems, with detailed terrain, beautiful character models and extraordinary weather effects.
Unfortunately all this comes at a price, requiring a powerful computer to get the most out of the graphics. Morrowind also supports pixel shading for the water effects, and when in action, it is truly amazing. The water looks extremely realistic, and when the rain falls, the rippling effects are truly something to behold.
Other cool effects include the realistic weather effects. Watching the sunrise and set is amazing so is the rumbling of a thunderstorm as it approaches and engulfs you, or the sandstorms in the desert regions. The people at Bethedsa have truly outdone themselves with the graphics.

Luckily, the sound is up to the same high standards as the graphics. Thunderstorms rumble overhead, blades clash as they are deflected, and people scream with pain when hit with a sword. The voice acting is great, although the majority of the game is actually text. There are some problems though, as many of the NPC's will say exactly the same thing. It becomes a little monotonous to travel from one town to another only to discover that all the people sound exactly the same, and have exactly the same things to say.
The music is another high point, giving the game great atmosphere. It actually reminded me of 'Lord of the Rings' to a certain degree. It did get a tad tiresome hearing the same tracks over and over after a while, but I guess that’s the same with most games.

Truly the best part of Morrowind is its gameplay. Morrowind allows you to play almost any way you want. There is a main story line, but you don’t actually have to do it. You can go off and complete side quests or just explore the land. You have a journal that records most things that happen within the land, and keeps track of quests. It's good to be able to see your characters own opinions on certain issues, although it was a bit disappointing to see that it was the same no matter what character type you chose.

There were some problems within 'Morrowind' that did hold the gameplay back. One of these problems includes selling items you have accumulated on your quest. I was able to find items worth over 10,000 gold pieces, but unfortunately the most gold a seller I could find had was 2,000 gold. Another problem was arrows. There seemed to be only a certain number available, meaning that solely relying on the bow is not a good idea.
Another problem was the enemies, as early on it just seemed like they were all the same, just bugs and flying creatures, although the further you get in the game the bigger and harder the enemies get. And lastly, the mini-map was a bit of a pain as it only appeared on the menu, and not actually within the game, which would have helped navigating a little.
Luckily though, there is much to do in the land of Vvardenfell. You can even do alchemy, mixing your own potions from items you find in your quests, weapon enchanting allowing magical weapons to be made from existing ones, and much, MUCH more.
Morrowind also features a personality system, so when you talk to a character a bar from 0-100 is displayed. If that bar is low, the person may be reluctant to talk to you, or if they are a merchant, they may charge you more for items. If the bar is high the character will be more helpful, and may even offer you jobs to do for gold. There are a number of ways you can get a character to like you more. By completing previous quests for them, bribing them, or admiring them. You can even get them angry by taunting or intimidating them. Get them angry enough and they may just attack you! Using these speach craft skills doesn't always work though, as sometimes the other characters will just see through you, and your reputation with them will drop instead of increase.

Combat in Morrowind however is a different matter. To me it just seemed like it relied a little to heavily on 'click like a maniac!' and for that reason, the combat wasn't very strategic. You can however execute different attacks based on which directional button you are pressing at the time, and can do stronger attacks by holding the attack button down for longer.

There were a few problems with Morrowind as a whole. Running under Windows XP, there was a tendency to crash to the desktop for no reason, and due to the large world there also seemed to be many load times between areas. These problems never became too serious, but they were a bit of a hassle.
It should also be mentioned that the retail version of Morrowind comes bundled with a map of the game world that is of an exceptionally high standard, and is so good I have it hanging on my wall. Excellent stuff!

Otherwise though, Morrowind is a very deep game allowing you to go and do what you want, the way you want to, and is sure to keep RPG fans happy for a few weeks to come. And with a built in editor that allows you to make your own world, the possibilities are near endless!

Pros
+ Varied gameplay
+ Beautiful graphics
+ Open ended gameplay
+ Great sound and music
+ Huge world to explore
+ Plenty of replay value

Cons
- Still a bit buggy
- NPC's share much of the same dialogue
- High system requirements
- No mini-map when playing, only on menu screen
- Slow walking speed

Graphics: 10 Provided you have the right system, this game is a treat to play
Sound: 9 Great music and sound effects
Gameplay: 10 So much to do and see!
Longetivity: 10 This game will take over your life!
Overall: 10 An excellent game, well worth your time

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/02, Updated 11/11/02