The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

"An impressive game hurt only by a bad combat system and numerous bugs"

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is an American style RPG set in medieval times. Morrowind is the third game in the Elder Scrolls series; however it is the first one that was released on Xbox, the others being PC only games. Morrowind is similar in style to the Baulder's Gate series and uses the Dungeons and Dragons system for stats and gameplay. What truly makes this game unique is the near infinite possibilities for who your character is and what you can do.

Morrowind is an American style RPG, which is very different than the Japanese RPGs such as Final Fantasy. Japanese RPGs tend to be very linear, while in American RPGs the game is very open and does not limit what you can do. This adds a bit of interest and difficulty to the game.

Morrowind is perhaps the most time consuming and open ended games on any console. A fair warning to people: this is not the kind of game you can play during your spare time on the weekend or off-and-on between other games. Unless you have a lot of free time, don’t bother with this. You have to either be completely dedicated to it or you will lose track of what you are supposed to be doing unless you’ve been taking notes. This is because of how open ended the game is: you can literally do whatever you want and basically make up the plot and objectives as you go along. Unfortunately the game makes it more difficult that necessary to keep track of objectives by the way it records events. All events are recorded in a massive journal rather that tracking incomplete objectives like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic does. As a result, if you forget what you are supposed to be doing you may have to dig through pages of entries just to figure it out again.

The open-endedness is a double-edged sword in that it requires time that many people simply do not have, and yet it is what makes some people want to spend 100 or more hours playing it. Traditionally, in console RPGs the story line is linear and the game will not let you do anything you are not supposed to do. This is not so for Morrowind - you can do whatever you wish, but you will bear the consequences for your actions. For example, you can steal anything or attack anyone, but if you get caught you go to jail. When you become strong enough you will be able to kill people at will without being defeated by the guards who respond to your attacking townspeople, but if you kill somebody important to the current storyline, you are in serious trouble. This is the difference between console and PC RPGs – console RPGs tell you the story, PC RPGs let you make up the story as you go. (Morrowind is a port of a PC game, so it still counts as a PC RPG).

The trade-off for open-ended stories is that the storyline is just not going to be as deep as it could be if it was linear. Because there are so many variables associated with this type of storytelling, it would be impossible to program every single possibility for an open-ended and yet highly developed story. Perhaps RPGs will eventually get to that point, but they are not there yet.

Morrowind does have a story, and a fairly good one at that. You start off not knowing where you are going and why. You are originally assigned a task and send out into the Morrowind. Once outside you meet new people who give you more opportunities, allowing you to do your job or go off on your own. This is what will be going on throughout the game: having a list of objectives that can be completed or ignored depending on your choices. What race you choose affects how people interact with you and your class determines how you go about finishing your missions.

What is impressive is the way that the game will never dry out do to a lack of missions. There will always be something to do, even if it is just you going around collecting things to decorate your home with. If you go looking for a job, somebody will have something for you to do. Mission can be very simple or incredibly complex, it just depends on who you are and who you talk to. If you don’t want to do a job you can just explore the land, which is a very time consuming event. The land of Morrowind is indescribably large and it will take you quite a while just to walk from one end to the other. Along the way you will encounter many new things and people. If you can get into the game, it is almost impossible to run out of things to do.

Not only is the storyline determined by your actions, your stats are as well. You have a vast variety of races, classes, and birth signs, all of which determine what stats and skills you excel at and what your weakness will be. As you use a skill it improves, so fighting improves strength and accuracy, while running improves speed and stamina.

The difficulty is not so much in fighting the enemies or solving a puzzle, but in having the patience to figure out how to you want to build up your character and what you want to do next. Like most RPGs, if you are having trouble fighting, it is not because the enemies are too strong, it is because you are too weak. You will have to spend time leveling up, and leveling can be difficult, especially in the beginning when your chances of hitting an enemy is low and it take multiple hits to defeat them. Eventually you will become so powerful nothing will be able to stand against you, but that is a time consuming process.

Combat is the worst part of Morrowind, and it is an unavoidable pain. The biggest problem is your low accuracy, so you will spend a lot of time hitting air. Even when you hit the enemy you will not know how much damage was done or how much is left to do. This makes it very hard to strategically plan on using weapons or magic to attack or if it would be best to heal. As your levels grow fights will not last as long since you will deal more damage more often, but it will always be cumbersome.

The controls are very intuitive and make use of the multitude of buttons on the Xbox controllers. You use the left joystick for movement and the right for looking around and moving the camera. The learning curve for the controls is very short, a few minuets at most. The game can either be from a first person perspective or third person, with the camera slightly behind and above the player. Despite having a third person perspective, Morrowind was meant to be a first person game and generally plays better that way.

Morrowind will not push the Xbox’s hardware at all, so don’t expect a graphical showcase. It is a port of a computer game that is a few years old now, and it shows. This does not mean that the graphics are bad, just that they are not amazing. The characters are well designed and impressive looking. Overall, the colors are rather drab and boring, however since the game set in the dark ages, it works. The water effects are very impressive. To put a positive spin on the average graphics, it should be noted that as a result there are almost no slowdowns or glitches.

Like the graphics, the music is not the most amazing thing of all time, but it is not bad either. I never felt the desire to mute the TV, but on the other hand I don't want the soundtrack either. It is a shame, because a great soundtrack can make an RPG even more immersive. The sound effects are quite impressive, both spoken words and ambient sounds, such as wind, water, etc. The voice acting is well done; each character has a voice that matches their personality/body. Almost all of the ambient noises that you hear in real life are in this game: fire burning, wind blowing, footsteps, metal clinking, stones falling, etc.

Replay value is where Morrowind really shines. With 10 races, 21 classes, and 13 Birth signs, that gives you over 2,700 possibilities for characters, not to mention the open-endedness of the game. Once you play through you can go back and take different actions than you did before. Of course, since you may never run out of things to do and finish the game, it is quite possible you won’t need replay value to enjoy this game for a long time.

The only thing that Morrowind lacks is multiplayer and online support, so the MMORPG fans may not enjoy this one if they prefer the multiplayer interaction. However, in my opinion, the single player is so deep you don’t need other people to increase the value of this game.

Of course, no game is without its bugs, and Morrowind has more bugs that almost other game on any console. While you will spend countless hours playing Morrowind, you will also spend countless hours staring at the load screen and replaying things after the game freezes. Saving very frequently and in multiple files can reduce crashes to a mere nuisance, though you will still have to reload more often than you will want to. The load times are almost unbearable and there is absolutely nothing that can be done about it, aside from getting the PC version.

Conclusion

Morrowind is only for the most dedicated RPG player since it will take almost a hundred hours of your life. This is also not a console RPG, so don’t expect one. As long as you know what you are getting into and enjoy this style of gameplay, then you may enjoy it, assuming you can deal with the combat system, load times, and crashes.

Morrowind is currently a Platinum Hit, so it is only $20 new. An even better deal is the Morrowind Game of the Year edition, which is $30 for the original game and two expansion packs (Bloodmoon and Tribunal). The two expansion packs are around 50 hours of playtime each, making Morrowind GOTY one of the longest games ever made.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/03/03, Updated 03/21/04