The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition

"The non-linear rpg"

Morrowind: Game of the year edition is a game the Bethesda created as an expansion to the original Morrowind game. It contains everything the original game has plus extras!

Game play (10/10)
Morrowind is a huge world. I find that it is bigger than any Final Fantasy game. It can take hours to get from one side to the other. This would be an annoying thing to get from one place to another, but there are means of instant travel. From teleporting, to boats, to a silt strider (giant creatures) there are tons of other systems of travel right at your fingertips.

One of the best features of this game is that you are free to do what you want. You could go and lop off a person's head, but what would happen if you did that in real life? If someone saw you, you would become a wanted man at large, until you turned yourself in or cleared your name, or you could go through the rest of the game with guards at your heels, your choice. Same goes with other things; say you saw a bright shiny gem on a table, so you say to yourself I want that gem. So you take it and as would chance the owner walked in right as you had your hands on it, you would either be arrested or have a bounty placed on you head. So if you are going to kill someone or steal something or do anything illegal be stealthy about it or don't do it at all.

With all this freedom, problems can arise though. Say you kill a person and nobody see you, great you got away with it. Right? Maybe yes, maybe no. Mr. guy who has something you want might be a powerful man or part of a quest which could sometimes make that quest unsolvable or a certain faction fall apart ect. Not all people are like that though.

With all this freedom I have been talking about there must be some choices at what you are right? Right. At the beginning of the game you can choose from a variety of different races, each with their own ability and stat bonuses. After that you will be thinking cool, but it isn't over yet you can also choose your birth sign, which could give you abilities ect. after that it gets even better you can choose what you want to specialize in from three choices (stealth, magic or warrior) then you can choose from a list of over 50 skills to be your major and minor skills. These major and minor skills will give you bonuses in them to begin with and will affect your leveling up. The other 45+ skills will go into you misc. skills and can be used but don't affect you leveling up and get tiny bonuses at the beginning of the game. You can level up these skills in three ways. Using them, getting a trainer to train it for you (for a cost!) or reading rare books that will increase you skill only once. Each skill has a root attribute. These attributes are strength, intelligence, willpower, agility, speed, endurance, personality and luck. You can raise up these skills by raising your characters main level up. You can level up by raising up your major and minor skills ten times. When you level them up you can choose any three of these attributes to level up. You cannot raise a skill up past the level of its root attribute.

The main and in my case only big problem in Morrowind is the glitches. You start your game as a small file size on your XBOX but as you continue through the game it will grow. This causes occasional (rare) game freezes. So it will help to save a lot and have multiple save files. Bethesda fixes most of the glitches from the original Morrowind to the GOTY edition, but a few remain. You could walk through a door and find that someone or someplace has disappeared, this is easily fixable just leave and reenter and he/she/it/town will be there. If you kill someone however in most cases they will be dead for good and leaving and reentering will not help at all. There are other glitches that can help you if you use them and various other small ones.

What is the difference between Morrowind and Morrowind:goty edition? Hundreds and thousands of hours of game play is what it is. I am talking new quests, weapons, armor, spells, places and tons of other things that totally rock. All of these things and places can be used and ventured to by your original character. It is build into Morrowind.You ask certain people to go to these adventure filled places and they can teleport you there or take a boat there. I am talking MEGA extra stuff.

As I said before Morrowind is a huge world. Now imagine how many quests, people, cities and monsters Bethesda could pack in there? They could put tons in there. I am not sure if anybody has done everything, and I know nobody has done it in one play-through. There are huge factions having hundreds of members each, some rivaling each other. There are evil sorcerers to defeat, people to assassinate fortresses to storm, things to steal, people to help The list goes on and on.

Story (8/10)
The odd thing about Morrowind is that it really doesn't have a linear quest. There is a “main quest” and with the GOTY (Game of the year) expansion two more are added. If you would say “story line” you would have to specify which one. Alongside the three “main” stories there are many side stories that could be small games in themselves. Most of these are rising in a faction or serving a king ect. The main story is long and at times boring, but mostly fun and enjoyable. There are tons of quests for you to do. I am talking thousands of them. The main quest is just the trunk of a tree that thousands of side quests branch out of.

Graphics (7/10)
The graphics are not really good quality; in fact they are pretty bad for Xbox. They aren't so bad as to not buy the game, or have a big affect, they just aren't that good.

While the quality is not that good what everything looks like it awesome. Houses range from being mud brick homes, to tree to houses, to houses made out of skulls and many other types. The armor and weapons are creatively made and look astonishing. When you get something enchanted it has a glossy look to it that actually has some amount of good quality graphics in it. The people, monsters and practically everything else are unique, creative and really cool looking.

Sound (8/10)
The sound is decent. I really though it was cool that people would talk to you as you walked by them and what they said depended on how they felt about you. The other sounds like swords clashing or the drawing of a bow or walking ect. are average nothing extraordinary, but not bad either. The background music is not distracting like in other games, it is there and it adds a piece to the game.

Play time/replay value (10/10)
I have never seen a game as large and detailed as Morrowind.It will take hundreds of hours just to beat the main quests and thousands to do side quests ect. It will take many replays to do everything in the game. You cant do everything in one play through as joining certain faction or doing certain things will make people love or hate you and it is impossible to weave through all that and do everything. If you start a second game Morrowind will lose nothing of its original splendor as there is always something new to do.

Morrowind if one of the best and exciting games I have ever played. Two thumbs up. The only things that could be improved on are the glitches, graphics and maybe a tiny speck of game play here or there. This game gives you freedom from the linear RPG experience and puts you in charge of the game. It is up to you to make your story, not go get the game and get addicted to it right now. That is an order!

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/13/06