The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

"Disappointing, but still good"

Having just bought a new computer recently and being a big fan of rpg 's I decided to give The elder scrolls III:Morrowind go. Buying the game of the year edition I thought I would be getting a ton for my money, sadly this was not the case.

Morrowind is not a bad game, it just isn't as long lived as you'd expect. You start out as a prisoner being released because of the emperor has special plans for you. As you sign your papers you can select which race and class you want to be or just create your own. After a quick tutorial you step out and from this point on you can go anywhere and do anything. That's right, you can explore the whole world and level yourself to the max before you do a single thing of the main quest. The game even encourages to go out and explore before you start with the quest.

This is where the first problem arises, you get almost no sense of achievement from doing the main quest. The narrative is just mind-numbingly dull and the plot is not very original either. It just feels pointless because the game rarely rewards you with anything good from the main quest, no interesting storyline,plot revelations nor good treasure.

So what if you still have an enormous, rich world to explore right? Wrong. This is the second problem, and this is the games pitfall. The design of the world is really lazy, Firstly there is about 6-7 different creatures on the map which just randomly spawns every couple of hundred meters. Airspace is dominated by 1 beast, a winged abomination called the cliff racer. They are quite possibly the most annoying monster in any rpg ever, there are hundreds of them and they will invariably hunt you down forcing you to do battle with them.

Then there is the dungeons. The problem with the dungeons is not their design, they are all quite moody and have a distinct feel. But the fact that only the different types of the dungeons feel unique, not the dungeons themselves. They feel like modified versions of the same "mother" design. You also hardly ever get anything special from them, just the same hack n' slash 10 monsters and collect some loot. And the thing that really ruined the experience for me was the way the dungeons had been placed on the map. Like morrowind was a giant pizza and they just sprinkled them evenly across the map. So after you have seen all the different types of dungeons you have seen it all.

Then the third of the big problems with this game, the npc 's. While there is an impressive amount of them (some 1500) there is about 20 different. Furthermore they are extremely generic with everyone in the same town repeating the exact same thing. So the only use for them really is just for learning spells, training or buying stuff. The other unfortunate npc 's that don't offer any services might as well be road signs or something equally static.

The combat is also about as exciting as playing scrabble with your grandma. They way attacking with a weapon works is you select one three different types of slashes none of which have any strategic difference. Only difference is the attack values differ on each weapon so one might be good at thrusting and the other at swinging. This of course relates to the battle in that you will only be using the most effective attack. Magic could otherwise be fun but it's too clumsy, most often you'll get the living daylights kicked out of you before can cast enough spells to kill your opponent. So the combat in this game is very simple hack n' slash.

And finally the music. The compositions themselves are great and atmospheric, the problem is there seems to be about 5 of them continually looping. So in the beginning they are really nice but after a while you will get tired of them, not good for game which you're supposed to be playing 100+ hours. It's also annoying that none of the towns has their own theme music but just the same loop over and over.

Then on to the good points.

I liked the way magic works in this game, i feel Bethesda has quite successfully created a flexible system which will have you tampering for some time. The idea is basically you pay someone to teach you a spell and when you have learned it you can create your own with the effects of the bought spell. So your whole list of spells can be custom created, the catch being you have to buy a spell with the desired effect before you can use it. Although not to much avail in combat the magic system is still useful for creating enchanted items. A feature I found really interesting and great fun. If you have a soul gem in your inventory you can use a spell to trap the soul of monster in the gem. The stronger the monster, the better the charge is you get from the gem which you can then use to put sn enchantment on almost any weapon, armor or piece of clothing. The rank of the item then determines how powerful of an enchantment you can put in it.

The graphics of this game are also quite nice despite the fact that they are dated. There's just a big sense of awe when exploring a huge place like the capitol Vivec, which is divided into several districts and even has it's own sewage system. Or when caught in a blistering storm of ash from the red mountain when traversing the barred, rough and unforgivable ash-lands. Or admiring the dense foliage and murky swamps in the coastal area. The water also looks quite nice.

There is also of course a lot to do in this game, provided you don't mind running errands or killing monster A to get item B to deliver to person C. Most of the quests are like this but there's also interesting stuff in there, like in the beginning you get a task to spy on a character who owes money to another character but is lying about having any money. So after a while of spying you find out he is indeed hiding his money in a tree stump. So when after he leaves you can go take the money and make a choice of keeping it or return it to the person who hired you. What you do will affect his disposition towards you.

Another impressive feature is also the level of detail in the game and the whole back-story to morrowind. There's actually a collection of several hundred books in the game all of which you can read, your character even learns new skills from some of the books. These help to immerse you in the game as they contain a lot of information of morrowind and Tamriel (the land in which morrowind is located). This level of detail is further carried out in the plants and animals which can be made into ingredients to use with your alchemy skill. Say for example you kill a rat, you can take the meat of the rat and use it for your potion or just eat it.

So you will probably like this game at first (I definitely did) but chances are that the charm will wear off pretty quickly when you start to notice how repetitive this game really is. But then again you could end up loving every bit of it. If you can live with the repetitive dungeons, repetitive music, generic npc 's and boring story you will most likely love it to pieces. If you can't well, there's is still much fun you can have exploring the vast world of morrowind.

Either way if you are a fan of rpg 's there is really no excuse not to own this game because the game of the year edition of morrowind contains both the bloodmoon and tribunal expansion packs and at 25 euros it is a total steal.

Bottom line:
Could have been the greatest role playing game of all time but because of a few detrimental flaws fail to deliver on that account but still a great, immersing game none the less. I feel it deserves a 6.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/07/06