The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The Good
Daggerfall, the predecessor of Morrowind in the Elder Scrolls series, was a very ambitious game that captured the hearts and the minds of many hardcore role-players, at the same time "scaring away" those who were overwhelmed by the size of its world and its openness. Some people felt it was too big, with too much random design, both for locations and inhabitants.

Morrowind corrects that right away by offering us what is undeniably its most valuable asset - its world. The world is the star of the game, a goal in itself; and it is quite amazing. Without doubt, it is one of the most mesmerizingly beautiful and attractive worlds ever to grace a video game.

Of course, the technical quantum leap contributed to the quality of the game's environment. The vision of Daggerfall was still slightly ahead of its graphical capacities; in Morrowind, technology caught up with imagination. No more desolate, poor sprites decorating the landscape; no more pixelation and drab textures. Morrowind is significant as one of the visually most advanced role-playing games in history; not ever since the first Ultima Underworld have we seen an RPG that challenges first-person shooters in graphical prowess. Yes, the characters could have used some more work, but both in- and outdoor areas are beyond reproach, and the water is absolutely gorgeous. I honestly can't recall another game from that time and even a few years later with such beautifully rendered water.

This world, however, becomes much more memorable thanks to its artistic side, its strong personality and sense of style. The province of Morrowind is exotic: giant mushrooms cover the lairs of strange creatures; majestic urban architecture co-exists with the native dwellings of the dark elves; twisted mountain paths, dark caves, rivers glistening under the busy sky - the world of Morrowind is a marvel, and it is worth to play this game just for its exploration.

And this exploration, like in the previous Elder Scrolls games, is absolutely unrestricted. You can go wherever you want right from the beginning. The gigantic world (yes, much smaller than in Daggerfall, but still much bigger than in most other games) is open to you, and you are free to get to know it in any order, from any side you want. It has more charisma and mysterious charm than its predecessor, and a much more logical and coherent structure. I also liked the fact that you had to physically travel to towns rather than being magically transported to them through the world map. The freedom of movement is exhilarating; it's hard to play other games after Morrowind because they feel so limited in this aspect.

The world is also meticulously detailed, with people and objects everywhere; you can talk about thousands of things and get thousands of items. There is a huge amount of quests, several large factions to join, and so many different locations that you can easily complete the game while having seen only a small fraction of what it has to offer. This kind of generosity makes role-playing particularly rewarding: you are given the freedom to be what you want to be, unbound by moral constraints (except your own) and restricted accessibility to places and quests.

I think the series' trademark system of "practicing" skills is excellent. I love this steady, focused approach to leveling up, and I love the fact that with enough patience you can get overpowered. The whole point of role-playing is to start low and then reach tremendous heights. Morrowind brilliantly conveys this feeling. You start as a nobody, with a lousy weapon and no armor, easily killed by medium-sized creatures in the wilderness. But slowly, through exploration, questing, item-gathering, and not the least practicing, you can become a mighty, feared warrior who can take on Daedric lords and other assorted creatures of darkness. This process is extremely addictive, since there is hardly any limit to what you can discover and do in this game.

The main story may be less intriguing than in Daggerfall, but it nevertheless offers some interesting missions, and is generally enveloped in an aura of mystery that fits the gameplay very well. There is little urgency in the main quest, and it differs in its format from the usual "save the world" template. This goes well with the whole idea of "making your own story", building a biography for the protagonist by yourself rather than doing exactly what the designers told you to do.

The Bad
There is less randomness in Morrowind than in Daggerfall, but repetition and artificial widening of content is still evident. Yes, the world is populated by hundreds of NPCs with whom you can discuss various topics; but after a while, you begin to notice that these characters tell you the same stuff over and over again. There are no truly memorable characters in this world; 99% of the NPCs are signposts, drones devoid of personality and useful only for obtaining quest and basic info. You can try to conduct the conversation in such a way that you avoid the incessant "job description" dialogue ("I'm a thief. Thieves steal things and then sell them for profit. We also have a Guild, with branches located in the following cities... etc."), but then you may miss out some important info and will be left with pitiful one-sentence introductions that say nothing about what kind of person the character in question is. I still can't understand why the same writers who created all those wonderful books that can be found in the game world couldn't bother to write decent conversations.

The quests improve only slightly over the "I need you to kill a person. I will pay you 1437 gold pieces" of Daggerfall. With a few exceptions, the quests involve simplistic and repetitive tasks that offer no moral decisions, hence diminishing the game's value as an RPG. There is a lot of indifference in the people of Morrowind, and I couldn't help thinking sometimes that, in the long run, it didn't really matter what I did or did not in the game. The static, dry inhabitants of Morrowind form an unpleasant contrast with its beautiful art; it is as if someone put a curse on these people, making them apathetic and nearly lethargic, with intimidatingly robotic reactions to any crime the protagonist commits, and completely oblivious of anything else around them.

All this creates a feeling of emptiness, a certain coldness and loneliness that gradually creeps out and eventually takes over. Morrowind is a fascinating trip, but one that resembles an archaeological expedition more than a visit to a functioning, normal country. One may argue that this isolation is deliberate, intending to emphasize the complete freedom by eschewing any attachments to the characters; but that is a far-fetched theory. I'm sure that it was possible to populate the game's world by interesting people without harming its image as a "create your own story" experience.

The Bottom Line
Morrowind was the game that propelled its creators to stardom, and I think its success was fully deserved. We can complain all we want about its weak side quests and lack of interesting characters, but its majestic scope, its sensual beauty, and the exhilarating freedom of its gameplay are unparalleled. Forget about story, forget about goals: let yourself melt in the gigantic, strange world, and perhaps you will see how you slowly find yourself unable to leave it.

The Good
The 'good' section could go on for quite a while, so I'll try to keep it as summary-ish as possible while still detailing all the marvels of this game.

You start out as a released prisoner who's been shipped off to the island of Vvardenfell, on the far northeastern reaches of the Empire of Tamriel. Why, you don't know (and similarly you have no other knowledge of your past). You at once enter a charming little medieval village filled with great architecture and people milling around randomly. Of course, as soon as you talk to a few NPCs, the less-than-charming undercurrent of events in the town becomes evident: the local tax collector has vanished, and probably killed by the way people talk of him. The guards are corrupt. People at once offer you quests of stealing from other people. And this is before you get to cities with the assassin's and theives guilds! (There seriously is an assassin's guild, and what's more it's totally legal--a writ from the guild being literally a pardon for murder!)

Once you've gone through the preliminary steps of creating your character (which is cool because you can choose from a huge list of diverse characters, or--as I think most people did--just combine whatever skills you want into a character of your own choosing) then you can head out into the next room from the census officer and proceed to rob it of all its silver plates and lockpicks and money, if the urge strikes you. From there on you can do whatever you want. No limitations, no orders from anybody except directions to go to another city and find some guy, which you can put off forever if you like. You can explore around the gigantic island of Vvardenfell, which has impressive landscapes: the coastal areas are green with grass and mushroom shaped trees and lakes, but as you move closer to the volcano in the middle of the island it becomes a maze of paths in between rocky, blacked mountains, with buildings made from the shells of giant insects and bazillions of dungeons and tombs throughout.

There are numerous guilds and feuding factions you can join and do quests for them to gain respect and services. There is a main quest, but you can just ignore it and go explore the island, discovering every little secret plot, historical mystery, or evil shrine that is has to reveal. After a good amount of playing, my character has still only explored the western coast of the island, which leaves lots more to see, and has never run short of things to do. Many secrets await (such as being turned into a vampire, sometimes inadvertently) and little flashes of humour too (sometimes unintentional: one time I sold a huge heavy shoulder pad to a wizard in a robe, and if you sell an expensive item to anyone, they'll put it on. She put this on, and it looked hilariously funny)

Even out in the wilderness are NPCs who offer you quests: I was walking around one time and some lady asked me to direct her to a place where she was making a pilgrimage to. She knew where it was, so I don't know why she needed a guide. But she offered me 150 gold, so I obliged. Along the way, we were swimming through a lake when I noticed that her dead body was floating on the surface of the water, having been killed by a hostile sea creature. it was all the same to me--the gold was on her anyway. Etc.

The game is totally opened and it would take months or maybe years of playing to full explore the island--and there are two expansion packs as well, Bloodmoon generally being considered the better of the two.

Anyway, graphics are awesome, there's a wierd variety of creatures, that, combined with the wierd 'Ashland' terrain almost feels like you're on a desert alien planet. The architecture is extremely varied and carefully done, and every little detail is in place. You can do anything you want, almost, and lead your character down any path you like. Live as a knight, running around freeing slaves and saving lost pilgrims. Or become an outlaw, sneaking around towns and hacking up citizens for their valuables--which works fine as long as you don't get caught. Well, Looking at how much I've written, it's probably almost enough. So on to the Bad.

The Bad
The majority of my gripes with this game are of the 'it could have been even awesomer' variety. As it is, the game is better than most, but I still find myself seeing ways it could have been better done.

A more serious problem first: The quests are often repetetive and boring, consisting of go-get-this-item (or, even worse, gather a batch of alchemical ingredients, for which you have to go rooting through every little plant in the countryside hoping to find it) or go kill such and such a person or monster. I hear the quests are a lot better in the Bloodmoon expansion, which I haven't played.

Secondly, you need an incredibly powerful computer to run the game, due to all the great graphics and huge extent of the place, and most people probably don't have the required system specs. And even with a great computer, you'll encounter frequent sandstorms in the Ashlands which drive your framerate down to horrible levels.

While there are plently of different NPCs to talk to, they seem bland and undetailed, most of them apparently having no in-game reason to exist--they don't reveal any information that other people don't, they don't offer quests, etc. And the time of day doesn't affect them in any way: they still wander around the streets, meaning it's no easier to commit a crime under the darkness than the light. The only difference is that the guards carry around torches at night.

The crime and legal system could have been a lot better. Let's give some examples: I can walk into a guard tower and find a guard standing up there, doing his job. I decide to wait until his back is turned and then grab that incredibly valuable armour sitting on the table behind him. My crime is unseen and I walk out (he doesn't notice. 'Is that an iron longsword in your pants or are you just glad to see me?') but you'd think that he'd have had a good enough look at me that when they notice the stuff is gone they'd come looking for me. Or I can go up there and kill the same guard, and beat him to death instantly, but somehow I get the message box that 'Your crime has been reported' and I have a bounty on my head--making people unwilling to talk to me, among other things. Even though the only witness is stone dead.. Could it be that someone saw me on the way out? No, because I got in trouble the second I hit the guy. Another example: I can kill a villager while nobody is looking, then sit next to the body poking at it with my sword and playing paper doll with it, putting different clothing and armour onto it, and a guard walks right past, not having any second thoughts. And nobody ever mentions that the person died, either. And finally, I can find someone wandering in the back alleys and hit them. Then they run away and out into an open area full of people and guards, and I then catch up and kill them. But the guards didn't see the beginning of the fight and don't pay any attention to it.

Enemies don't go through doors. Every location, even a cave, has a door, and if you're being overpowered, you can just walk out the door and sleep for a couple hours to regain your strength, while presumably the enemies are beating on the inside of the flimsy wooden door, unable to open it.

And your actions, ultimately do not affect the game world. You can do whatever you want, become head of any guild, or the leader of a ruling house, but you can't affect their political relations with the other houses, or send people on the same missions you fought through to get to your position. But forget about all this. The game is still awesome.

The Bottom Line
This game is incredible. Get it now. First get all the necessary computer upgrades to run it, but still get it. And tell all your friends!

The Good
The Environments were spectacular and the creatures and landscapes were amazing. Bethesda crammed so much wonder into a little disk. The characters were wonderfully designed and beautifully generated. The random weather system itself was good. And just the amount of caves and tombs they could fit in and did fit in are just..wow.

The Bad
Well It lacked an actual conversation system. The only reason you talked to a guy was to ask for directions or kill him.On another note the combat system is repetitive.Just slash and slash and hope you kill your enemy before it can kill you. Also I believe that there isn't enough good loot to steal. That's what I love most about the game but you can pretty much only get cups and plates from someone you rob.

The Bottom Line
It's good still outweigh the bad. A perfect game for any true Elder Scroll lover. While others might have trouble with it just give it time. It's a wonderful game.

The Good
STORY You are a captive, onboard a slave ship that has docked at the Island Vardenfell...off the coast of Morrowind. Having no idea what you are doing here you must start off greenlimbed and form a life for youself in this new world.

The main story also revolves around a few aging gods, plots to end the world amongst other many many sub plots...

GRAPHICS Probally some of the best I've seen for a RPG...there's so so so much detail in this game - and if you have a good graphics card to boot - well you're in for a treat!. Firstly the island is chock full of details - you are not just wandering around a blank plain with a few trees here, a rock there...no you are wandering around an incredibly varied enviroment that is filled with many sights and sounds...from giant mushrooms, to rolling hills...it's pretty much all there (save snow and forests). There are plenty different races living here and each have their own style of accomodation...Some races like the Imperials live in large impressive fortresses that dot the sky, others may live in the ancient massive city of Viviec where the tiered cantons reach into the sky...or some choose to grow their homes out of large impressive fungi. The details on these dwellings is very impressive...from the simple Tudor style house to the massive intricately twisted and spirialing plant homes the textures are just incredibly done, the same goes for objects and characters. Each character has a different face...though some faces are more commonly repeated - mainly on guards...and some races don't have many faces to choose from...which kind of spoils it a bit...also there are different hairdos for each race as well that adds to the viarity. Lighting is also well done, there's just something wonderful about seeing the sun slowly set and the stars comeout...you can even see the birth signs in the night sky. There's just so many more things graphcially that make Morrowind so wonderfully immersive...you can't really explain them all.

GAMEPLAY Ok this is very different from most other RPGS...other RPGS offer the usual - kill more things...get experience...Morrowind...does it differently...the more you use a certain weapon the more skill you get with it...after you fill around 200 experience points of whatever (be running, using a sword...etc) you gain a level...it's a bit confusing.

Acessing something is done by using space, attacking is by the right mouse button...then comes accessing the inventory.. The inventory, map and stats are all one one screen...this is really irritating because there's not much room for it all - unless you are running the game at a high resolution. It would have been better to have the map and so on a different button. Sword fighting is a bit too dull - you move in a direction and you strike in a direction - a but too limited in my opinion - and it's made even more limited by ticking the "best attack" option in the menu.

AI is pretty lax...they either attack when provoked, or just attack...no real tatics involve - just run up and whack the crap out of the offender. Also the crime system is a tad weird as well...when you loot or kill someone - you can either pay the guard, go to jail (lowers experience) or fight (making yourself an outlaw).The things to do in Morrowind is large and plentiful...you can even become a vampire - adding a twist to the game as you can only travel at night - and most people want to kill you outright.

There are many many quests that you can partake on - and some are simple, others are just weird...but all really involve just either killing someone, or retreving an object (usually by killing someone). There's alot of walking involved as well, while there is transport to and fro areas...most of the time you are on foot power...which comes to another game flaw...you walk like you have had your legs bound! It's very slow and irritating...even when you're constantly running.

The Bad
It's hard to get into. You start off with no idea what to do...or really where to go, not many people like you, and you have next to no cash...and you just got beaten up by a rat. Also the scope of Morrowind is just massive, there's so many things to do in the game it's just crazy...and you kind of get bored in the end because you end up doing so many side quests that you never get around to the main story. Also the Journal is just not very well done. It records many little notes and conversations in there and is a good book of reference...but...it gets too messy fast and you are constantly flipping backwards and forwards trying to find information about something...there's an index - but that does not really help as well. Also the game is bit of a resource hog...after a while the game starts to slow - so you have to close the game to clear the memory a bit. Also the game is prone to just crashing...no warning...just click boom back to desktop...which is very annoying if you have not saved.

The Bottom Line
Morrowind does have a few weird gameplay flaws in this in comparison to the other RPGS out there...but there are so many things to do in this game world that you will rarely get bored.

The Good
Morrowind is a truly excellent title. I've been a fan of the Elder Scrolls for a long time, so I had been following the game's development for years before its release, and I was shaking with excitement when I inserted the disk into my CD-ROM drive for the first time, praying that my system stats-- which were barely over what the game required-- would make it, and a small, rebel part of my brain (the part that could admit that there was a possibility Morrowind might be a disappointing game) was praying I wouldn't be disappointed.

I wasn't.

The game begins on a prison ship, as you may well know. You are smoothly introduced to the basic controls and interface as you design your character. The choice of races is slightly more expanded from the prequel, Daggerfall, to add Orcs (who are no longer considered vicious barbarians by all the other races) and Imperials. As in all the ES games, you have complete freedom in designing your character. No newbie to RPGs, I built myself a custom character and jumped right into the game. Beware, Morrowind World.

The graphics are stunning in Morrowind; everything, from tables to rocks, is modeled with great attention to detail. I was shocked when I turned wireframe on for the first time and really grasped the complexity of the 3d models they use. I've never seen so many polygons in an RPG before.

The sky is a real treat, and, in my opinion, the very best part of the graphics. Clouds float gently across the sky, slowing growing denser, until a steady rain begins to pour; then they part, the sun peeks out, and you have a few more hours of light before it sets... ahh, the sunset. And then the night! You can even spot constellations in the sky around the large twin moons of Nirn (The World). You have never seen such a wonderfully detailed sky before.

The creatures were well modeled and not disappointing at all, especially as you meet higher level ones. I just love how the Dremoras look. And-- thank you Bethesda-- there are no spiders in the game. +5 to gameplay on a 1-5 scale for that ;-).

The world itself is quite different from Daggerfall. It's not the same massive scope twice as big as the UK; no, it's more like, say, two miles. But unlike Daggerfall, none of this is stock terrain. Every bit of land has been custom designed, from the plants-- that you can pick-- to the creatures and the dungeons. There are around 300 dungeons to explore and 15 towns; this may sound like very little, but I have had characters get very far in this game, and they have barely scratched the surface of the world you are allowed to explore.

The NPCs are unique, too; all 3000 of them. They will each have an individual opinion of you, each have different things to discuss; you can also bribe and 'admire' them if you want to get on their good side, or taunt them if you want a fight without getting in trouble with the authorities.

The whole world is wonderfully set up and it's such a relief to have the world so ALIVE around you, such a sharp contrast to Daggerfall's everyone-comes-from-a-cookie-cutter-ness.

The game is packed with extra 'little' features, like making your own spells and trapping souls and enchanting items-- doing it yourself or having others do it for you, you choose. There are a collection of guilds to join; there are some unique to Morrowind, like the Morag Tong, and then the typical Fighters, Mages, and Thieves guilds. The quests in Morrowind are unique; you'll never be told to do the same thing twice. Side-quests included, I'd estimate there were something like 200 of them, but that is a very low estimate.

There are also three Great Houses in the game you have to join at one point or another. The conflicts between them, and the foreign Mages, Fighters and Thieves guilds, grow more obvious as you learn more about Morrowind. The whole place is veritably seething with intrigue, but if you think guild conflicts are all there is, you've got a lot to learn. Along the way, you'll find out about the (generally) hated Daedra and the Tribunal of gods, and about a prophecy that is changing the world.

The sound in the game was a bit of a disappointment for me. Each creature has 3 sounds and that's it, and some are even re-used for other creatures. This felt very cheap. NPC dialogue lines, however, are very well recorded and there are a large number of lines per Race/Sex combination.

The music is wonderful. There are only about 40 minutes of it, but it'll take your breath away the first time you hear the title theme. It grows a bit redundant, but you can add in your own fantasy themed music easily if you want too.

Then there is the Construction Set, the tool with which the entire world was made. You can make mods of all types with it-- change walk speeds, make new armor, raise a whole island, or even change the world completely. The CS deserves a review by itself, really. It's the best game editing tool I have seen-- beats the NwN toolset flat, in case you were wondering.

The Bad
The NPC models were a bit of a disappointment. The graphics system had to manage NPCs so that different armor could fit over any body part, so the game had to use a clunky limb system. This isn't too bad normally, but it does look a bit blocky and subtracts from the realism.

The game isn't balanced too well. Good items are too easy to find early on. But then again, how could it be balanced perfectly, in a game where any class could go any place at any time?

Is that all? No, not really. That's not enough to call Morrowind a 'flawed masterpiece'. But there is something else about the game. It's hard to explain.

But, after playing for a while and then going back to another game for a bit, you'll realize how bland Morrowind's textures are. It's like every single texture was taken and had the contrast lowered half way to black and white; everything is nearly in shades of gray. Except the sky! You don't notice it right away, but it can really bug you after a while.

It's only part of the full effect, however. Added is the fact that you start the game as a stranger in a strange land; the world around you is alien and very dry. The burned lands that have been ruined by the Fire Mountain take up 3/4 of the whole island. After a while, you'll find yourself yearning for verdant forests, lush fields-- something that feels ALIVE! That is my main complaint with the game. It really does begin to trouble you after playing it for a while.

The Bottom Line
Morrowind is a great game. The one large flaw and other, very small ones do not ruin it; they might have destroyed a smaller game, but Morrowind is so massive, with so many amazing features and so many hours of gameplay, that it still comes across as a brilliant game. It's one that I think every gamer should get, especially those who enjoy RPGs. It really revolutionizes the genre. 'Flawed Masterpiece' just about sums it up!

The Good
The greatest thing about Morrowind is that you can pretty much do anything you want. If you want to be a hero you can go off and kill some monsters and if you decide that you just want to walk around the continent picking mushrooms then you can do that as well. The stilt strider in my opinion was a great idea even though you never actually get to control it yourself. This game could take literally years to get bored of if you are a hardcore player and tryed to explore the whole map. The towns and citys in Morrowind are beautifuly set out apart from one (Vivec) and you even have the choice of going in someones house, killing them and then taking the house for your own. There are also so many secrets that can be found and probably if you went around and looked in every hollowed out tree stump you could find a very powerful weapon.

The Bad
If you decide to travel by foot then you are going to be in for alot of frustration because when you are walking about every 5 minutes or so you get attacked by annoying creatures called Cliff racers. And even if you decide to be sneaky and swim to get away from the the Racers you will be attacked by Slaughter fish instead, so that usually takes most of the fun out of traveling by foot. The only otherthing that really bugged me about Morrowind was that even on X-box there were alot of bugs and I could have been running across a bridge and then I would for some reason just fall straight through it. Though this did not happen very often.

The Bottom Line
A great game to buy and well worth the money you pay for it. You can probably get this game for about $40 now and thats not much to pay for the amount of entertainment you get out of this game. If you like Rpg's or you juts like freedom in a game then this game is more than worth taking a look at.

The Good

The first thing that strikes you about Morrowind after a few hours of play is the sheer enormity of the game world. There is a LOT to do, but the game starts you off with very little clue about what to do. For some gamers (like myself) this may be a dream come true in gaming: a huge world to explore and complete freedom to do as you please. For other gamers (like a few friends of mine), this is a complete gaming nightmare. "You mean I have to wander around for hours and explore and talk to people just to figure out what the point of the game is?!?!?" Yes, you do, but if you can appreciate that sort of depth in an RPG, it is truly a wonderous thing to behold.

Let us talk about the degree of that depth for a moment. When I say you can do as you please, you really can. Feel an item at a shop is too expensive? Steal it (if you can get away with it). Don't want to help the arrogant noble woman find her way across the mountians? Don't bother. In fact, you can just kill her and steal her clothes if it strikes your fancy. Don't feel like coughing up a handfull of gold every time you want to stay at your favorite inn? Murder the innkeeper and his guard, and stay there free of charge as often as you please. All these actions, of course, have consequences. You have a reputation rating, based upon your actions, and that rating affects how NPCs in the game will react to you. Most people won't want to talk to 'Entorphane the notorious outlaw', but will be much friendlier to you if you don't make a habit of running around killing people and generally wreaking havoc.

So what is the point of this game, you ask? Well, you are a stranger in a strange land; a prisoner granted an unexplained and unexpected pardon from the Emperor himself. Soon you find yourself working for the Blades, the Imperial spy network, and the story unfolds from there. In addition to the Blades (the so-called 'Main Quest') there are a large number of other factions, guilds, and mafia-style family houses you can join the ranks of. All of these other factions have a fairly large number of missions to perform, given to you by various faction leaders scattered all around the map. You can do them or not, the choice is up to you, but as you complete missions for the various factions, your rank in those factions rises, eventually allowing you to vie for their leadership. By the end of my game I was the head of the Mages and Fighters guild, and ranked very high in a family house and several other groups.

A wonderful and somewhat unique feature of 'Morrowind' is the ability to create custom magic spells and magic items. You can enchant almost any item you find with any spell you know (if you have a high enough enchatment skill), allowing for the creation of just about any custom magic item you feel you may need. The process is somewhat confusing at first (thanks to the somewhat lacking manual), but once you figure out what is going on, it's awesome. Want a ring that allows you to breathe and see clearly underwater while you are wearing it? That's cool, just make one, or go to an enchanter and pay (a LOT) to have one made. It's a marvelous feature, that later in the game especially, allows you to create a wealth of magic armor, weapons, and so forth, all with precisely the effects you wish them to have.

The skills system in this game is great as well. It's very simple, and very effective. You have a skill list and all characters have the same skills. The difference lies in what you choose for your primary and secondary skills (which level up faster) and your tertiary skills. Every time you use a given skill (hit an enemy with a sword, cast a spell, pick a lock, etc.) your skill goes up a bit, eventually rising to it's next level. When you raise 10 primary or secondary skills by one level, your character's overall level increases, bringing along with it the usual upgrade in hit points, magic points, and so forth. It's a very well thought out system, that ends up allowing you a tremendous amount of freedom to mold your character into precisely what you want him or her to be.

It must be said also that graphically this game is most impressive. Look at the water. It looks freakin' real, I tell ya! The sheer amount of detail in the game is amazing. Everywhere there are plants and fungi you can gather (for alchemical purposes, if you want to make potions). There are dozens of caves, tombs, and ruins scattered all over the map to explore and loot for treasure. The weather and time of day changes gradually and you make your way around. Sunsets and sunrises are truly beautiful, sandstorms are amazing to look at, and rain storms look and sound like real freakin' rainstorms.

**The Bad**

The game is not without flaws, some of them glaring. The worst offense is the journal that you keep. It is cluttered, disorganized, and confusing. When you are running missions for the Theives guild, the Fighters guild, the Morag Tong, House Hlladu, the Mages guild, the Blades, the Imperial Cult, the Temple... whew, you get the idea... things can become confusing. All of the relevant information is there in your journal, but it may as well not be. The journal is organized chronologically... period. There is no option to sort between quests completed and quests outstanding, no way to separate Mage Guild quests from tribal quests, or what have you. If there is a mission that you received a long while ago, and you need to look it up for the details, you will sometimes (especially late in the game) have to flip through literally hundreds of pages of the journal to find the relevant information. I have to give a big 'boo' to that tremendous lack of foresight by the developers, who obviously knew the depth of the game they were creating, yet failed to devise a method to effectively sort through that depth.

Another complaint has to be the spell/magic items list. Much like the poorly organzied journal, these important spells and items are placed on one very long list that you have to scroll though every time you want to select a different magical effect. It's tedious and irritating, and should have been made easier.

It must also be said that the combat system leaves a lot to be desired. By default you press the attack button and will swing your weapon in a manner that is dependent upon how you are moving your analogue stick. There is a most powerful attack for each type of weapon, but attacking this way feels awkward (to say the least), uncomfortable, and frustrating. I opted to select in the options menu to 'always use best attack', which always attacks in the most powerful style for any given weapon. Sadly, this greatly simplifies the animations for each weapon, as you will ONLY attack in one specific way (i.e. your dagger will always thrust, your hammer will always strike downward, etc.) The other problem with combat is the complete lack of feedback regarding enemy damage. You can hack away at a guy (or monster, or what not) for days, and see no change in his appearance, no indication of how badly he is injured. This diminishes the ability to use strategy in battle, because if my character is badly injured I need to know how the other guy is doing before deciding if I should finish him off or run away. One may argue that hit points are not displayed in real-life combat, but you can tell by how much the other guy is bleeding and missing limbs how well (or poorly) things are going.

There are a few other minor gripes I have about the game. NPCs are almost always in the same spot, standing around, night or day. It is as if you are the only person in Morrowind who moves around much. There are also a few bugs relating to event timing and NPCs that can cause them to disappear entirely and permanently. There is no abilty to annotate the map, which is unfortunate considering the size of the map, and the HUGE number of places you need to find and remember the locations of. Having to walk all over a virtual world can kinda suck at times, especially early on when a few cliff racers can send you to your death over and over and over and over again, when all you want to do is get from point 'A' to point 'B'. There are modes of quick transportation available, but you can't get everywhere from anywhere, and you'll have to 'change busses' quite a bit. The final complaint I have would be that your character can become immensly powerful relatively quickly, making killing most enemies a matter of a few sword swipes (especially if you have created a really powerful magic sword). Oh, and pop-up can be distracting, considering the games otherwise top-notch graphics, but that is really just a minor complaint.

**The Bottom Line**

'The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind' is a game I would consider a must buy for any gamer who prefers a PC-style RPG over the turn based Final Fantasy style crap that keeps being turned out for consoles. It's a very deep and satisfying RPG, if you can get into it, and are willing to spend some time with it. It can probably be completed in about 40 or 50 hours if you rush through, but it took me probably closer to 200, and that is where the real pleasure in this game lies. There is so much to do, so much to explore, and so much to learn about the virtual world that you are inhabiting, that taking your time and taking it all in is the best way to approach it. If you are looking for a unique roleplaying experience, this is your game.

The Good
One of the greatest things about this game is it's completely open-ended. The game starts out on a prison ship, and soon you are released on Vvardenfell, an Island in Morrowind. From there you can choose to follow the main quest and fulfill ancient prophesies, join one of the guilds and rise through their ranks, or just explore the huge island. You can stop and start any of these things at almost any time in the game. Those are just a few examples of how open-ended this game is. Another great quality this game has is the graphics. The detail and quality of each individual object in the game is astounding. This game will probably give you 100+ hours of game time, if not, more.

The Bad
This game has few flaws, but they're just enough to piss you off. For an example, lets say you've gotten nearly to the top rank of a guild, you may have to make a choice, to stay at the Master rank of the guild forever or try to become a Magister and then the Archmagister which are higher ranks than Master. Seems simple to make the choice right? Well your boss "forgets" to give you the choice and you automatically get stuck at the Master rank forever. Glitches like this will pop up ever so often in the game. Of course you can get a patch for most bugs and glitches in the PC version, but obviously not for the xbox. Sometimes there are ways to avoid these problems but most people don't figure that out untill it's too late. The glitches in the game, avoidable or not, are too big a problem than we hoped fore.

The Bottom Line
This game is a must get for open ended RPG fans. And luckly, the new Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of The Year Adition, that will be coming out very soon, will fix many of the previously stated glitches and bugs in the game. It will also include the expansions, Tribunal and Bloodmoon, which are also must gets for RPG fans. All and all, this is an amazing game that will keep surprising you when you think you've seen it all. This is my favorite game.

The Good
First things first. This game is truly a work of art, close to a masterpiece. When I started playing it, I was shocked by its complexity, starting with the character creation and finishing with the ending of the main quest itself. It's not like your common hack-n-slash RPG, that limits your actions by forcing you to do certain things in a certain order to progress.

Basically, you are a prisoner, an "outlander" that's been set free in the immense world of Morrowind, and is told to see a man in the town of Balmora. Now, you're on your own, and you can choose to fulfill your quest, or to start making a name for yourself, in your own way. Your actions will change the way the others look upon you. You can be a choose a life of crime, and people will be afraid of you, or you can choose to be a good guy, earning people's respect and admiration.

You can apply for membership in the various factions and guilds available, each with its bonuses.

The Bad
The game is somewhat incomplete, lacking basic needs such as eating, drinking, sleeping, bathing, etc. Also the dialogues, the NPCs' routines are rather lifeless. Not to mention that more than half of the map is a barren wasteland.

The Bottom Line
This game is a must-have for the RPG lovers, and despite all of its problems, it spawned a huge community of players and modders. All the problems can be fixed by using mods available freely on the internet.

Anyway, a great game by Bethesda Softworks.

The Good
Not what I liked, more like what I loved. I personally put in over 2000 hours in this game (not including modding). The great thing about this game is that you don't have to follow any line of quests, you can just do whatever you feel like, and if you feel like doing the main quest, or side quests, do as you please. The graphics are unbelievable, even today, nearly two years after it came out. Not to mention the size, unbelievable. It's hard to get a grip of how huge Vvardenfell is, but get a grip. The beauty in the world is amazing. Some people say that the NPC's are dull, and that they should be doing stuff. They do do stuff, walk around, thats the NPC's job, to do nothing but maybe give you hints to what to do, thats why they're non playable. And some do, most don't, but considering the hundreds of npc's, and by hundreds I mean over 1000, it is truely remarkable. And if they dont like the games way's, it comes with an EXTREMELY powerful editor that is fully compatible with 3D Studio Max.

The Bad
The bad, well, with a game with so much goods, things can go wrong. You have to read a lot in this game, as would be expected with the size of the world, and the limits on a cd. I think that the game could have had them talking about most things if it were on multiple disks, which most huge games are. Reading doesn't bother me much, but it may bother others. Another thing that bothered other people, but not me much was the inability to do much when you start out. Virtually any animal can kill you, and you can't hit anything, and most people in today's world are used to GTA and games that you start out with abilities, and don't gain or lose any of them. But you have to earn your way to the top of the world in this game, and I love that. The cool part is, that technically have unlimited levels. In one of my characters i'm level 232 (and i'm 1000 in another, but that time i used the console). Other than that, there's not much wrong with this game.

The Bottom Line
This game is, to me, the greatest game I've ever played, if your into games with freedom, then this is for you. Think of it like this, its GTA, except with a much bigger world, more NPC's and a better story, but with swords, spells, and that D&D flavor....... buy it today...

The Good
I don't know how they did this, how long it took, and how much effort was put in it, but I do know, it is the best game ever.

When Arena was released, it tried to break away from other RPG's and distinguished itself. It could have been great, but Bethesda failed to make it fill its potential. A while later, Daggerfall came. It could have been great, but the graphics and stability pulled it down. And now, Morrowind has arrived, and boy is it good! The game features some of the best graphics ever seen, along with a very impressive array of races, characters and quests. But still what astounds gamers is the size. You can explore Morrowind to its greatest. You can follow the main plot, take some side plots, or join a guild and perform duties. Or you can just do anything you want. The hundreds of items and weaponry is very impressive, and the detail put in the game is simply amazing.

The Bad
The only thing I didn't like about this game was the character build. Polygon placement in coordination with the "spine" (as i call it) build makes some characters move stiffly, and it looks rather stupid.

The Bottom Line
Nevertheless, this game is a must have for gamers, whether you like RPG's or not, this game is a must.

The Good
Well, Morrowind.....here goes. Even thinking about this game makes me tired. It never ends. Taught me a lot about that I don`t necessarily have to finish something I don´t like.

Well, the graphics are nice, especially compared to Neverwinter Nights which came out the same year. Each location really does feel real and new...almost. Was kinda nice to explore.

The books, oh the books were excellent...the background for this game was brilliant. It seems that the Bethesda designers really aren`t stupid (like I sometimes like to think) but instead have a huge amount of knowledge about how the real world works; the geography, history, Rennes-le-Chaeteu style historical mysticism... I mean everything that I can think from our world was in some form or another there. The world of Morrowind seems logical thanks to the background information. This was the only time when I felt that a fantasy world really could work.

And it`s world. Most fantasy games use just Ye Olde England for inspiration for their worlds. Well Morrowind... The Empire is Roma with a touch of baroque, and Morrowind (the nation, not the game) has a lot of similarities with occupied Israel with a touch of Mongolia, completed with the Temple and longing for the Messiah stuff.

I loved the small details. Like looting corpses gives you stuff what you saw them carry when they were alive and what they logically would carry. You will not find a Sword of Ultimate Destruction on some beggars corpse, or in the booksellers chest. I also loved it that you don`t gain experience from killing but from practicing your skills.

Art Design... Sadrith Mora, Ascadian Isles, Vivec...beautiful locations, just beautiful. I like mushroom buildings.

The Bad
Art Design....the world was mostly brown. I cant stand brown, it makes me feel horrible. I even cant really stand games that are brown when they have good storytelling like Arcanum or Ultima 6.

Morrowind boasts itself as the most open-ended and complex cRPG before Oblivion. The truth is that none of the Elder Scrolls games are really open-ended. (Bob the imaginary gaming friend : "Hey now, that`s quite a statement considering the fact that Elder Scrolls are known for their open-ended gameplay.")

Wait let me explain, true, you can go anywhere you want to and do any quest you want to (Bob: "Aint that what open-ended gameplay is all about?"), but... for example, in Arcanum if you killed an plot-critical character the game was designed so that you could still continue... in Morrowind if you kill a plot-critical character the game ends with a message that you can no longer complete the main story (Bob: "Thats what some would call choice and consequence.").

And the quests are pretty generic. I mean, there were basically like 3 different quests (get me that item, kill that man, go to a place called Abu Dhabi) in the game and 1000 variations of them. Thats not what I would call open-ended. Its just bad design.

And having a different character does not change anything; I mean in 2002 when Morrowind came out the gaming world had already experienced Fallouts and Arcanum where the game responded and commented on your choices in character design(even Ultimas did that). Morrowind does not to that. There isnt really any difference being a female or male, Orc or Nord, Mage or Fighter.

You cant make any choices in the game, it all comes down to this: accept or decline quest (Hey, wtf I am talking about! There were only like 10 incidents when you even had the choice to decline the quest, you mostly accept them), and when you accept the quest there really is only one way to solve the quest. When they tell you to kill, you kill; when they tell you to fetch, you fetch; when they tell you to bark, you bark or kill them, loot them and then get another quest. Sometimes you can even give people money (or admire them) so that they would not kill you. Yeah it is kinda like persuading, but doesnt feel as cool (Troika did persuading and seducing best).

One of the problems is that the dialogue is boring, dull, horrible, disastrous, catastrophic, apocalyptic, you name it - it is just so nonliving and unreal. I played Arena just for seeing if designers at Bethesda have somehow evolved and... they haven`t. It is still the same boring stuff without any distinctive characteristics.

Here is an example:

NPC: "Hi, I am mister Sinuele Musiala and I am commoner."

PC: Commoner

NPC: "Commoners work."

PC: Molag Amur

NPC: "Molag Amur is the lava-region in the Vardenfall district of Morrowind in the Empire of Tamriel."

PC: Ring

NPC: "My ring was stolen and I heard that Lukipikidikus Mahaberallus last saw it in the other side of the world."

PC: World

NPC: "Yes."

journal entry added

I swear I saw the same kind of dialogue in Arena, just without the extra detail like commoners work.

Now to the main quest. Been there, than that. Doesn`t Bethesda have any talented writers (hard to believe considering the quality of the in-game books) or they just think that good writing is unnecessary.

Bob: "Actually, many of the in-game books were just crappy pulp novels."

At least the amount of side-quests allows you to choose which House to join (gives you a different looking stronghold), or which dungeon to go (although after visiting 3, they all look the same. There´s hundreds of them in Morrowind. How did Ultimas manage with only 8?). The main quest allows no choice in affecting it. Its static. I think this is very bad, especially in a cRPG made in the new millennium. You might say, hey you mentioned Ultimas and I see that they are in your favorite game list, but in them you could not affect the main plot either, so shut the f*ck up and praise Morrowind as the god that came before Oblivion.

Bob: "Actually, I wanted to say that..."

Well, my imaginary gaming friend, I got news for you Ultima 5-7 were made in 88-92 ,14-10 years before Morrowind. What they had were NPC schedules, npc-s lived lives, and then in Ultima 7 each NPC was an individual with his/her own fears, interests, life; they were real (as real as one gets in cRPG made in 92). There were no Lukipikidukus Mahaberraluses who say that commoners work.

Bob: "Hey, I even don`t like RPG-s, so..."

And then, my imaginary gaming friend, you might say: "What about Planescape or Baldurs Gate, they didn`t have these things you talk about."

Bob: "Will you stop putting words into my mouth!"

Well, my answer is, they had GOOD writing and in Planescape you could make choices inside the storyline. What my point is, is that games should evolve, not take a step back in design. Morrowind for all its prettiness and background world detail feels older than Ultima 5 (not to mention that U5 had more interesting characters).

Bob: "Great. There`s just no reasoning with you."

I mentioned that the background world detailing was excellent, but it is done in a encyclopedia-boring kinda way. It really is not in the real game-world. In theory Morrowind`s world is rich with conflict - two different religions, conflict between the occupied and the occupiers, dissidents and the official doctrine, secret cults, smuggling, slavery, racism, drugs, clash of cultures, everyday life and the supernatural, true history and false history, colonialism, etc. - but in reality all that represents these things are the variations of the "three quests" I mentioned earlier. Only books and some wiser characters (characters that come with more generic topics than others) try to add something to the world. Well Bethesda, less tell, more show next time (unfortunately you did the same thing with Oblivion).

Yet another thing. Jeremy Soule. I loved Icewind Dales soundtrack, but the guy is just rearranging his old stuff. If you compare the soundtracks of Neverwinter Nights, Morrowind and Dungeon Siege (which all came out the same year and all were made by Soule) you cant really tell that they come from different games.

Bob: "Well I dont know about that. Dungeon Sieges soundtrack was pretty catchy and more cheerful than the others."

And Morrowinds soundtrack is probably the worst that Soule has ever done. All the battle themes and explorations tunes are just variations of the main theme, which itself is quite a nice melancholic little tune, but in a big game like Morrowind it gets really tiring and old fast. Considering the fact that Morrowinds world is more original than Sieges or Nights, he could have created something more closer with the game`s world - a mix between baroque, roman and asiatic. That generic fantasy soundtrack, that can be easily used in another game, is really a disappointment for me.

I still remember midnight meetings with Katrina in Shadows of Darkness and talking with wisps in Ultima or Gabriel getting into trouble, even feeding the eagle in King`s Quest 5 thanks to the excellent music that fitted and made these particular moments even more beautiful. Sometimes Soule creates the same kind of music, that feels so right for the game, and enchances and enriches it making it alive. This time he did not.

I remember these moments from games that I played many years ago, I wonder if I remember anything from Morrowind after 4 years. KQ 5 was also pretty bad on the writing department, but its music burned it into my memory. Morrowind is generic both in writing and music. And it had so much potential. The creative ideas behind its world are so refreshing after yet another Forgotten Realms game. But Morrowind fails as an open-ended game because of the boring quests, lifeless world and lack of human element in its writing.

Bob: "Perhaps the game was intended to be as such."

What do you mean?

Bob: "Elder Scrolls series are one of the most well-sold RPG series ever. I am fairly sure that the "lack of human element in its writing" and the bestseller status are somehow related. I guess most people like "boring quests" and big lifeless worlds. Not all people are pseudo-intellectual geeks like you. Its simple really, the game is fun because its not deep."

I see. Well... most people are stupid anyway.

The Bottom Line
Despite overall negative attitude of my review, I did enjoy some moments of the game. I like exploring and meeting new people and see how they live. Morrowind got only the exploring part right (if you ignore cliff racers - those things make combat even more annoying than it is in JRPGs; yeah, it`s possible for combat to be more annoying than in Final Fantasy).

But still, Morrowind has one great value. It looks pretty.

The Good
I have never played either of the previous Elder Scrolls games so I didn't know what to expect when I loaded up Morrowind but I have to admit I was definitely impressed. Right from the character creation screen its hard not to be amazed with how huge the game is. You create your character based on 10 different species and over a dozen character classes and from there you're free to do what you want. If you've read any reviews about this game, either negative or positive, the one thing you've probably picked up on is that Morrowind has a huge world to explore. You are free to basically wander around do whatever you want. There are several dozen villages to explore and an even larger number of crypts, caverns and tombs which are loaded with valuable and rare items.The game also contains many guilds and groups to join which will provide you with quests on top of the main story line, some which are quite creative and fun. The story is involving and dark and will draw you right in. My favorite feature would have to be the leveling system which allows you to level up individual skills such as lock picking or an individual magic or weapon class.

The Bad
Morrowind's open-ended gameplay and vast world can be a bit overwhelming to some. The fighting system is lame, you basically press you're left mouse button repeatedly until a dice roll decides that you hit you're opponent.

The Bottom Line
For every person that loves Morrowind there seems to be another that hates the game so know what you're getting into before buy the game. That said, most RPG fans will love Morrowind, its one of the best RPGs in recent memory.

The Good
The Elder Scrolls franchise has always been one of debate. Some love it others hate. With it 3rd installment Morrowind, we find a game that not only lives up to it’s predecessors, but surpasses them. This was the best of the series until Oblivion that is.

“Each Prophecy Is Preceded By The Coming Of The Hero, If They Fail To Appear…”

Morrowind opens with a somewhat cryptic montage. You awaken from your dream, or was it a vision? To find that your are on route to Morrowind, the newest province of the Empire, it is the continent of the Dunmer, or the Dark Elves. You have been released by writ of the Emperor himself. You have been instructed to travel to Balmora, and report. Of course you do not have to. That is the point and fun of Morrowind. You can play 100 hours with out ever completing “Main Quests”. Or just breeze through the campaign and finish under 40 hours.

The main plot, should you choose to except it, is very good and very well written. It involves you being the reincarnation of The Nevaraine, an ancient hero of the Dunmer. Upon his death Lord Nevar, said he would return again when his people needed him most. That time is apparently coming. As Dagoth Er, is also being resurrected, he means to crush Morrowind under his heel. And is a former friend of Lord Nevar.

The story is filled with twists and turns. As you try and fulfill a ancient prophecy. And the conflict between The Nevaraine and Dagoth Er, is the classic Hero/Villain conflict. The plot is very rich and has everything. Prophecy, revenge, betrayal, conflict, and everything in between.

Who Are You?

Character Creation in Morrowind, is astounding. You have control over everything. From your race, there are 10 total. Your class, there are tons, and you can create you own Multi-class, by mixing and matching, or by using the editor. Speaking of the editor, Morrowind, for the PC includes a Tool Set disc. With this you can create quests, classes, weapons, structures, and even NPC’s. It is incredibly easy to use, as even I was able to use it, and I have no experience whatsoever designing games.

Leveling up is handled a little differently than most RPGS, as you do not gain EXP. Instead you learn by doing. If you want to be a master thief, you must pick locks, a swordsman, you must use your sword, or ply your other various trades. It makes for a more realistic gameplay experience, but may turn some players off.

“Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting….”

Combat in Morrowind, is visceral, and can be great fun. With various implements of destruction, you can slash, stab, and chop your way through various enemies. Blocking is a passive skill, which sort of sucks, but what can you do? The real fun is when you do battle with humans and humanoids, as dueling a fellow swordsman is more fun, that cutting down a monster.

Crime and Punishment

Will you be a model citizen, a thief, or even cold-blooded killer? However beware, unlike some “open-ended” games. Ahem, GTA. Crime can gain you actual punishment. From jail-time, which can lower your hard-earned stats if you gain a long sentence. To banishment. Or even death.

But remember, it is not a crime if you are not caught.

When It Comes To Graphics This Game Steals The Show

The visuals in Morrowind are excellent. The continent of Vvardenfell, or Morrowind. Manages to look alien and realistic all at the same time. As tall trees and enormous mushrooms, fill dense forests. Strange and familiar creatures wander the landscape. Small villages and monolithic cities abound, as well as dark dungeons and tall mountains. The human and non-human inhabitants look real alike. The lighting effects excellent, the sun lights the sky and depicts realistic shadows, as does the glow of the twin moons. The changing time of day and weather also effects the look of the game. And the torch-light cast on your avatar looks stunning.

The sound and music is excellent as well. Combat sound effects are loud and reverberate. Voice overs sound great. But are not that common. Monsters roar, and spells sound eerie. There is lack of ambiance, but that can be solved by downloading a quick add-on.

The music steals the show here. With an epic score composed by videogame maestro, Jeremy Soule. The tunes range from, epic, heroic, to frantic as your engage in combat.

The Bad
The Bad and The Ugly

Well, the leveling system, is not for everyone. And Bethesda could have taken measures to make the world seem more populated. But this is a flaw in most games like this.

It can be very difficult getting started, combat will be very hard, and the game can overwhelming. Yet towards the end the game is too easy. Other balance issues abound.

The game also tends to very buggy. But at least updates are common.

This game has fairly low system requirements considering how impressive it is. Yet still may be too much for some systems, and others may have trouble getting it to work properly, despite the fact that they meet all the system requirements.

Passive blocking is the bane of this game. Why do you have no control over your shield, and weapon when it comes to blocking? At least Oblivion remedies this.

The Bottom Line
In the end Morrowind, is a fun, and addictive RPG experience that over comes it’s many flaws. And user-created content just adds to an already huge game. Live another life and have fun exploring and adventuring in the vast world of Vvardenfell.

The Good
The best parts of Morrowind are the graphics and the exploration.

The graphics are extremely well done, especially the water effects. Water looks like you could actually drink it instead of appearing (as it does in most games) as a translucent blue mess. Even more amazing are the effects when your character walks through water or when rain splashes into the water.

The other part of Morrowind that is done well is the questing and exploration aspects of the game. The game is very large and detailed, so much so that I have played through the beginning parts of the game three or four times and I haven't explored even half of that area, let alone the other 90% of continent and its islands. There are numerous factions and quests you can do for those factions to gain prestige and move the plot of the game along, but you can also ignore quests completely and just wander around looking for trouble.

Another trivial, but often overlooked detail in other games (cough Wizardry 8 cough) that I liked was that monsters almost always have the loot you expect them to have, not some randomly-generated junk. So if you slay a skeleton warrior that was chopping you up with a big battle axe, you will find Bonemeal and a battle axe on his corpse.

The Bad
There are almost too many things that I didn't like about this game to list. None of them make the game unplayable, but after playing the game for about 15 hours you wonder why they spent so much time on the water effects and so little time balancing the skills, making the interface easier to use, giving the characters personality, and giving good feedback to the player in combat.

The character-building tools are fun to use, and it is great to have the flexibility to make the character you want, but ultimately, the flexibility is illusionary -- there are only a few different types of character builds, and since you can buy training for cash, you can get good in skills even if you didn't specialize in them once you raise enough money. There is also almost no reason to specialize in Stealth because you can get all of the perks of the Stealth abilities by casting spells. Sure a thief can sneak and pick locks, but there are cheap, reliable spells that replace his abilities and they are easier to come by than a high Security skill and a pair of master lock picks. Why even bother with sneaking when you can just make yourself invisible? I had some fun with the thief I made until I tried out a mage build and found that I could steal 90% of the stuff that the thief could without specializing as a thief. I was never able to successfully backstab, even with weapon raised and the "sneak" icon clearly showing that I wasn't detected. So much for the thief builds.

So that gives you the choice between fighters and mages or a combination of the two. So now your only character-building choices are picking which spell schools and weapon types you want as Major skills and which you want as minor skills. The spells are fun to use, but are awkward to select even with the quick keys. The worst aspect of spells is that there is no obvious way to remove obsolete spells from your spellbook as you get or design better versions of them. So if you can't fit all your favorite spells on the quick menu (I couldn't and I only had 4 schools of magic) you have to bring up the spellbook menu and search through the list for it which is tedious to say the least.

Combat is poorly implemented. First of all, there is absolutely no feedback on how damaged a foe is, so you have no idea how close you are to killing your enemies, which eliminates a lot of combat strategy. Second, combat is even more of a click-fest than in Diablo 2, without the fun of having all those cool special attacks. Your only attack options are spells and melee. There are three types of melee attacks: slash, thrust, and chop, which would seem to give you some strategic options. Unfortunately, you have to do some really awkward gyrations with the controls to select between the different attacks, and it doesn't matter anyway because all weapons have one kind of attack that does more damage than the others, so why bother using any of the others? There is a game option to "always use best attack" that keeps you from having to jiggle as you clash swords. Why didn't they just remove the options altogether since there is never a reason not to use the best attack? Finally, it was obvious that Hand-to-Hand combat with fists was an afterthought, as it requires so many punches to KO even a lowly rat that you will wear out your index finger and your patience before becoming the Karate Kid of Morrowind. Also, for no reason at all, you can't use the Block skill with unarmed combat which would seem to be a natural fit for that skill.

A final problem with character development is that the Enchant skill is way too powerful. As long as you have the Soul Gems (and are willing to restore a lot of saved games or spend lots of money to raise your Enchant skill) you can put any spell effects, from paralyze to life leech, on an item, the only limitation being that you have the spell effect in your spellbook, even if you can't cast it reliably or don't have enough mana to cast it! So you can run around with your Staff of Paralyzation and Life leech and mow down monsters at your leisure. It would be much more interesting if the abilities on the item were based on the creature you had trapped in the Soul Gem. But of course Bethesda couldn't put something that interesting in the game, they had to make it generic.

Dungeon-delving and questing is a fun part of the game, but the price you pay is a rather disjointed gameplay as you wait for new scenes to load even if you are only visiting the local Inn to get a good night's sleep. The developers really should have toned down the graphics a little so they could have made the game transitions smoother. They should have done seamless transitions like Dungeon Siege, especially since it is only a single-player game! The other problem with their zoning is that creatures can't follow you in and out of zones. So if you are getting your butt kicked by a bunch of bandits and you have enough speed you can just turn around and run out the door to their cave (that's right...ALL of the caves in Morrowind have doors!) for an easy retreat.

The interface is pretty good, but there are a lot of things that require too many clicks and drags to accomplish simple tasks like inventory management. The inventory system is difficult to use and forces you to click and drag items too many times. It would be a lot more convenient to have a text view of many items, especially alchemical ingredients and potions, which all look alike after a while. I hate having to mouse over every scrap of hide or piece of plant that I have in order to find the right ingredients for my potion. I also wished that I could load two different types of arrows into one quiver so that I wouldn't have to reload during combat.

My final gripe is that none of the characters in the game are very interesting. I wasn't expecting the level of characterization of Morte in Planescape: Torment, but I was expecting at least a little more dialogue options than only being able to ask about quests, rumors, and what they do for a living. The worst part of the dialogue options is that most characters respond in exactly the same way. So if you ask any fighter about his job, he will respond with a lengthy paragraph that sounds like a resume submitted to the local fighters' guild. Yawn.

Some characters will join you as companions, but don't expect them to be very interesting or even very helpful in combat. Your companions always blindly charge anything that appears hostile, even if they are obviously overmatched. Even worse, they often charge into the path of your spells or arrows, and then take their stupidity out on your hide. After a while I just started killing anyone that wanted to join me so they wouldn't get in the way. After all, they still carry the reward money or item they were going to give you for doing whatever errand they wanted you to do.

The Bottom Line
Morrowind is a large, beautiful, open-ended RPG that allows you to custom build your character, spells, and magic items from components. Unfortunately, the good ideas in the game are overshadowed by a ton of poor game design choices that make the game a lot less fun and a lot more tedious than it should be. Perhaps the Mod community will be able to use the bundled construction kit to solve some of Morrowind's worst problems, but many of them are so embedded in the design of the game that I doubt anything but a huge gameplay and interface patch by Bethesda would solve the problems.

The game is still worth trying, but I would wait until it is $15 in the bargain bin and good Mods start coming out before shelling out money for it. If you did pay full price, you can at least console yourself about your bad gaming investment by looking at the cool water effects.

The Good
I have to admit I'm only barely acquainted with the previous Elder Scrolls titles, having played Arena ages ago and skimmed past Daggerfall but pretty much missing out on it when it got released. Still I knew enough of what was in store for me when I installed Morrowind, and in some aspects I am happy to say I got what I wanted.

For starters Morrowind delivers on what it was it's most hyped feature: the sheer size, detail and freedom of it's game world. So far this is THE game as far as expansive "sand box simulators" go. Ultima Ascension, Baldur's Gate 2, GTA, etc. etc. Nothing comes close to the sheer size of Morrowinds gameworld. And the amount of npcs populating it, quests to do, dungeons, items and assorted stuff is second to none. I played the game for months as far as I can recall and while I didn't log any "official" gaming hours I must have played three times the lenght of Baldur's Gate 2, and a quick look at my world map by the endgame only showed about 75% of it as explored...

For as extensive as it is, Morrowind's gameworld is also very detailed, with five distinct architectural styles (the classic "ye olde medieval" castles and keeps, the bizarre, organic dwellings of the elf mages, the indigenous villages of the local dark elves, the stylized settlements of the deserts, and the gargantuan leftovers of a long-forgotten civilization). These styles are applied to lots of cities and locations, some small enough to explore in 10 minutes or so, and some others sprawling over 5 loading zones and needing a transportation system of it's own like Vivec. Thriving in these locations are dozens of underground societies, guilds and mob families, each having their collection of quests, sideplots and characters for you to explore with total freedom of action (Want to become a slaver and aid hunting raids? Want to oppose slaving and go across the land aiding a Greenpeace-like society that liberates slaves? No problem either way).

Of course, handling such a gameworld would be a nightmare through the classic sprite 2.5D engine of the previous games, so for the first time the Elder Scrolls goes 3D, and the results are nothing short of amazing. The graphics engine manages to render the entire gameworld with smooth, detailed textures and models, as well as special effects that help create incredible foggy swamps, blinding sand storms, stormy weather, cool magic effects and one of the most amazing water effects conceived to it's date. Make no mistake, you do need one badass machine to run this one, specially since you are going to want to crank up the resolution to take in all the detail in the game, which includes unique models for each item and armor piece as well as for those tiny forks, plates, and decorations that fill each house.... amazing doesn't even begin to describe it. And then there's the complementing music and effects, which fits the game perfectly thanks to some stellar orchestrations and moody tunes.

As for the story, the game falls for the typical "legendary prophecy" stuff, but manages to inject some interesting twists on it by including government conspiracies, and generally playing around with the "requirements" you need to meet to fulfill said prophecy. Basically there's this ancient evil god sealed behind a magic wall at the center of the isle of Morrowind, the ancient god is awakening and threatens the known world and whatever, with only the help of another reincarnated god as the last hope.... at least that's what the natives of Morrowind believe, and knowing this, the government across the sea sends you, a former prisoner, as the reincarnated deity, tasking you with fulfilling this "prophecy", and aiding you along the way, but with their objective being getting a key person inside the reclusive Morrowind society and messing around with the local government. As expected both plotline share their place in the spotlight and intersect many times, generally making for a pleasant, if not extremely original, storyline.

All that plus diseases, the ability to become a vampire (and boy does that open up a whole new set of rules), fly around, make your own spells, potions and enchanted items, and fool around with an editor!

The Bad
Unfortunately this extremely ambitious title reached it's goal but disregarded some elements that can only be described as really hardcore design flaws, poor balancing and lame gameplay.

The design of the game was to make a massive, all-encompassing rpg, so it's a priority to have functional elements to help you keep track of what you are doing and what's going on around you. As in every other rpg out there this translates into a journal, however rarely has an rpg had such a poor excuse for a journal as this. Suffice to say that only the useless journal in Ultima Ascension is worse than this piece of crap. Well, actually they are pretty much the same! They both just write down whatever happens cronologically. Yes, Morrowind adds an hypertext linking system for easier navigation, and separates completed quests from the rest... but that's it! I can't even begin to recount the amount of quests I lost because I forgot about them and/or couldn't find their information in this godawful excuse for a journal.

Other holes in the design come in the form of zero damage feedback for combat, do you want to know how hard you are hitting your enemy? Or if this weapon is really better than that other one against that type of baddie? Well wait and see how long it takes for it to drop down, as there's no other way of telling... And I just loooooove the psychic police forces of Morrowind. Picture this situation: you (a thief) pull out a major heist in a mansion and leave town with dozens of unique and valuable items, right? Now in a city that's in the other side of the island you get caught pick-pocketing. And guess what? After paying the customary fine the cop takes what you stole that time, the loot you got from that amazing heist and every item you ever acquired by thievery, no matter if you have been using it from the beginning of the game! That is a real encouragement for thief characters, isn't it? And every time you run into the law it's the same... lovely. Thankfully if you dump everything you have on the floor right next to you the cops do nothing and leave, but it's still pathetic. Maybe even more so.

Moving on, the rpg mechanics are handled by a sturdy skill system similar to the previous Elder Scrolls games which improves not by the acquisition of generic experience points, but thanks to it's actual use and/or paid training. In other words: jump around a lot and your athletics skill increases, sneak around successfully and so does your sneak skill, bash lots of heads and you get better at handling that particular weapon, etc. I've always liked this type of systems, but whenever done correctly they would become extremely challenging and slow paced... fortunately that's not the case here, as the poor balance means you can max out most skills in no time and the "no classes" approach to gaming means even a thief can be a mage-slaying powerhouse and a giant barbarian can sneak around and steal like a pro thief... so much for specializing.

As for the gameplay and the many quests that populate Morrowind, they are completely filler material, with really uninspired quests that call for you to get this or that item and deliver it to X character and on and on and on. To be fair most of the main plot quests are cool and there are many sideplots worth exploring, but they are lost in a sea of mundane and stupid quests. Quest which would still be worth doing if at least you met interesting characters to interact with. However save for a couple of key characters in the game the rest are soulless drones. It really puzzles me the way Bethesda handled npc interaction... talking to a character opens up a dialogue window from which you pick up the desired topics of conversation as hypertext links... (Hi! I would like to ask you about....monsters,you,this city, etc...) The resulting conversations unfortunately are all generic lines blurted out on and on and on in the same way all over the island. Should you ask a key warrior character why is he a fighter he would suddenly abandon whatever demeanor he had previously and blurt out the same generic, resume-like explanation of what a fighter is and does as every other character in the rest of the island and the same with everything else (but those class descriptions really are the pits, really, whoever wrote that deserves to be shot on sight). It really is mind-boggling how could Bethesda waste so much time populating this gigantic gameworld with drones and think they had done a good job... Congratulations Bethesda: you officially have the game with the worst case ever of "signposts npcs", not even japanese rpgs match up to your title! And you know what? This takes it's toll on the game's freedom of action. After all, what's the point of straddling morally bleak lines if you get the same reaction from everyone either way?

Aside from that there are lackluster character animations (everyone moves as if they had the proverbial stick up their asses), so little monster variations that you'll think you are in a pterodactyl-only sequel of Carnivores and assorted problems with game balance and combat that make it significantly less of what it could have been (just whack away!!).

Also the ending SUCKS ASS. After the countless hours I spent in the game I get a half a second cutscene and that's it??? Damn you Bethesda!!

And where the hell are the horses? One of the coolest things in Daggerfall was having one and casting a levitation spell!! Ride of the Valkyries baby!!

The Bottom Line
An extremely ambitious title that achieved it's giant scope at the expense of some critical design elements that kills it in the minds of many gamers, or just make it less than perfect to others. I think I fall somewhere in the middle, as I think the game is horribly flawed, but also has a lot going for it and it's achievements deserve recognition.

Make your own mind about it, two things are sure about it: It's the biggest most gigantic crpg experience ever (and that's without taking into account the expansions) and it's almost equally annoying in it's problems.

The Good
The world is huge and beautiful. In fact its so big you often get lost, but to your pleasant surpise in the middle of nowhere you find ruins, tombs, or people. Speaking of the people there are over 1,000 NPCs you can interact with in the world. over 20 cities to go to, many books to find for pre-story and more story for those people who like RPG's a lot. Plus 13 factions to join and do missions for, 10 races to choose from, over 21 preset professions or create your own! The possibilities in this game are limitless and although you might feel like "what do I do now?" when you first start because there is no guided main mission. There does exist a main mission which happens to be the hardest in the game, as well as 1,300 other missions to do. So clearly you can see that the team has worked really hard on this game. Most impressively in all the text you come upon in the game, I haven't found one typo.

The Bad
Travelling in the game can get kind of cumbersome because the means of transport are limited (silt riders, mages guild, spells, game addons) unless you want to walk. Because the world is so huge, you kinda wish you had a horse but that would mess up the whole game for many reasons. The huge city of Vivec is too huge in my opinion, I've gotten sick of walking up and around the huge buildings, but the rewards of what's inside the buildings almost outweigh the walking distances. The journal and map could be better, but that is fixed in the expansion packs.

The Bottom Line
This is a great RPG, if you like RPG's you'll love this. If you don't "like" RPG's you'll like this game. It's worth just to look at even the sky is beautiful.

The Good
Let me start out by admitting that it's been several months since I played Morrowind. At first I thought that that would make my review a little suspect, but I've reached the conclusion that instead it might actually help people, since my remarks represent the impressions that have stuck with me over time.

First, the good. Morrowind is by far the most immersive RPG I've ever played. That's because it all takes place in first-person, in a convincingly rendered 3D world. Unlike most RPG's, which make you strain to convince yourself that you're actually the character on the screen, Morrowind lets you don the armor of your character of choice quite convincingly.

Hand in hand with that goes the fact that the art, the sounds, and the animations are all done nicely, and there are some genuinely interesting sights for you to see--at least for a few hours, until no matter what you see you'll have the distinct feeling that you've seen it all before.

Finally, the stats system is nice, with lots of areas for you to dump points into, and the freedom to shape your character as you'd like. Oh, and for the creatively inclined, the inclusion of a full-featured editor is a major boon--at least until your game gets so clogged up with crappy, doofus-grade mods that you swear off the use of them entirely.

The Bad
Ok. So much for the good. The bad: it's boring. Even though when you first start out, you'll be impressed by its seemingly limitless horizons, you'll soon realize that Morrowind is little more than yet another Federal Express simulator. The NPC's are flat and characterless, and there is absolutely no sense of life or activity in the countryside. Not a single butterfly or bird flits about in the sunshine. There is only lifeless landscape dotted with the occasional out-of-place looking "monster" (I put "monster" in quotes because none of them are particularly frightening). You'll be hard-pressed after a few days of repetitious slogging through Morrowind's environments to convince yourself that you're in anything like a realistic, living world.

Adding to this problem is the fact that Vvardenfell (the actual name of the island on which the game takes place) has got to be the most depressing place ever conceived. If Everquest is like crack, Morrowind is like Valium, and beyond one humorous main-quest NPC at the beginning of the game, there is nary a smile or bright moment to be had in the entire game. At least, there wasn't up to the point at which I finally had to quit playing before I just slit my wrists and ended it all. Every dark place is filled with evil and foreboding, but it's not exciting evil and foreboding, like, say, Mordor. It's dull evil and foreboding, like Cleveland, and somehow the designers have made even the bright, sunny areas of Vvardenfell seem merely like bright and sunny tombs full of nothingness.

As I said, the quests are boring. Even the main quest, which features one of those dime-a-dozen monumental revelations about your true nature so common to RPG's, lacks any ability to engage the intellect or imagination, and simply serves as one more excuse to send you hacking and slashing into yet another cave full of dark foreboding and evil. On the one hand you could ask, what does one expect from an RPG anyway? But on the other, you could ask with equal justice, why does the obvious and boring have to seem so doggone obvious and boring as it does in Morrowind?

The Bottom Line
Morrowind is a fun game for awhile, and is easily the most immersive RPG made to date. But it suffers from the somewhat serious defects of being boring and depressing. To be sure, it has legs among a certain segment of the population--those, I guess, who rather like boring and depressing games--but I imagine that for most people the interest in it will be relatively short-lived.

The Good
Morrowind is a wonderful step up in first-person RPGs. Compared to the few first-person RPGs out there, Morrowind is in many ways on top of them all, both in graphics and gameplay.

Unlike Bethesda's previous first-person RPGs, Morrowind's landscapes are all uniquely put together. No longer will you see endless flat lands with rocks and trees scattered around randomly. Instead, you'll see rolling hills, bridges, ancient ruins, roads, rivers, lakes, swamps - the list goes on - all placed there for a reason, and each one holding its own certain significance in the game. The game engine is also capable of letting you roam a world as large as your hard drive can handle!

Also unlike Bethesda's previous first-person RPGs, the dungeons actually look like dungeons. Cave walls are eroded, with stalagmites and cave-ins within its deep interior, as well as underground pools, and rivers connecting to other caves or areas on the island of Morrowind. Mines and tombs actually look like they were built by people for a reason. They are built to maximize efficiency and organization.

Every single area was put together with careful and reasonable detail. You'll find dressers full of clothing, a bookshelf with many different books, a study equipped with spellbooks and scrolls, etc. Looking into a half-hidden cave in the side of the mountain and you might find the remains of an unfortunate adventurer whose fate may perhaps forever be a mystery - or perhaps not, for further investigation might cause you to conclude his death was caused by a man you had met in a town just a few minutes before! You may find a ring at the bottom of a lake that had slipped off someone's finger during a swim, you might discover a so-called noble man's stash of illegal drugs in a locked chest in the back room of his house. The details that were added to the game is very impressive.

Another detail that sets this game apart from ALL other RPGs is that looting the corpse of a mud crap will uncover crab meat and nothing else! Kill a guard and you can loot his armor, his weapon, and his money and whatever else he had on him. You're not going to find a bunch of monsters carrying strange items that there is no reason they should have. Why would a rat be carrying around a dagger, unless it was stuck in its back?

The graphics and model details in Morrowind are very good. Most of the textures are wonderfully done, and everything is 3D modeled. Even paintings on the wall have 3D frames. Banners hanging from store windows have several polygons in them. The amount of detail in the graphics is truly astounding. If you have a computer capable of running it all, that is.

By far the most spectacular feat of the graphics in Morrowind is the water. I've never seen such realistic water effects in any game before. It looks real. While it is a flat plane, the animations truly fool you into thinking there are soft waves brushing against the shore. When it rains, the water ripples. And not just a few ripples either - thousands of ripples a second, as far as the water can render in the window. As you swim through the water, you cut through it as you would in real life. The water even reflects landscape, and imitates refraction (if you look at the water at an angle, all you'll see is reflection, but looking straight down and you'll see the floor of the lake/river/pool).

The variety in your character is also a lot of fun. There are many races to play, each with its own advantages and disadvantages, and many factions to join, each with its list of quests to send you on, with its own rewards.

As with previous Elder Scrolls games, the more you work a certain skill, the better you are at it. Running a lot raises your athletics skill. Jumping increases your acrobatics skill. Fighting increases your armor skill, your weapon skill, your blocking skill.

The game comes with a fully functional editor that you can use to create just about everything you saw in Morrowind - if you're good. And it's very easy to use mods other people have created using the editor.

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I've decided to add this bit several months after originally writing this review. I did not like the game very much at all, but I had a sort of urge to play it again and I've discovered why. Despite all the things wrong with it (which I assume you're about to read) one thing stands out among them all: the game is very easily immersive. I might say that it's the most immersive game I've played. The graphics, the music, the whole atmosphere of the game, and the fact that you're never limited in where you can travel really makes you feel like you're somewhere. If only they had avoided all the bad things with the game, this would, without a doubt, have been the best game ever made.

The Bad
Sadly, apart from great graphics and wonderful detail, the game is downright bad.

Let us start with the quests. For a game as open-ended as Morrowind is, it is awfully linear. There are an uncountable amount of quests you can do in the game, and one main quest that you must do to move the story along. The main quest involves fifteen or so subquests, many of which have subquests of their own. So, even if you don't do any quests but the main quest, you'll be spending up to hundreds of hours until you complete Morrowind. I would have mentioned this in "The Good", but you'll find that after the third or fourth quest, the main quest is rather uninteresting and the quests are simple and dull. One of the first quests you do in the main storyline is obtain a "Dwemer Puzzle Box" from some Dwarven ruins. This is a good quest, if a bit hard to find the stupid box. But after this initial quest, it's all downhill. The next quests involve tracking down people, talking to them, and being their personal errand boy for a little while. You'll soon find that being an errand boy is pretty much what the game is about. The main quest does improve greatly about halfway through, but once you've trudged through the first half, you probably won't care and will be forcing yourself to get through it just so you can kill the bad guy. Yes, you can visit the big bad boss at your leisure, but you cannot fight him until you've done all the other quests and subquests and sub-subquests in the main quest.

There are a lot of guilds and factions you can join in the game. Join the Fighter's Guild and fight the enemy with might and steel; join the Mage's Guild and destroy them with sorcery; join the Thieves' Guild and be victorious with stealth and cunning; join the Morag Tong and perform assassinations; join one of the Great Houses and perform duties for them. Knowing the choices that lay before you would inspire you to make your character's class something along the lines of what your line of work will be, but you'll find out that was pointless, as the definition of what your character is is often too blurry to tell - or care. A thief can spend all his time working up his stealth skill, whereas a fighter can just grab a ring that makes him completely invisible and do the job better than any thief ever could. And likewise a thief can use a sword almost as good as a fighter can, with enough practice. The only thing a character class does is alter the points in the beginning. So your class really only matters for the first 5% of the entire game. Once you become proficient in all skills, no lock can stand in your way; no guard can detect your thieving; no monster can survive your blade; no mountain is too high to levitate over; no sea is too deep to swim. You not only become too powerful too quickly, you become a superhuman God (there's a pun there, but I won't explain it for it would spoil the game). I often bickered about the reasoning behind most fantasy games that didn't allow mages to use swords or wear armor. I always thought the classes should be able to blend a little, but in Morrowind, they don't just blend, they merge into one big giant supermonster.

Back to the quests. One would think it would be great playing as an assassin for the Morag Tong. One would think that, but it really isn't. At all. The main task of the quest is to track the guy down. Killing him is simple. One hit. Bang. Dead. But you have to find him first, and this usually involves talking to a number of people until you find someone who knows something. And then you have to get to the guy you're supposed to kill, which usually involves one hell of a long hike in which you're destined to run into cliff racer after cliff racer after cliff racer after cliff racer. (Cliff racers are pterodactyl-like birds that spawn wherever there is rocks - and there are rocks everywhere.)

Each faction has its own individual mission, but after a few quests in each faction, it's hard to tell. While they have their own missions, the quests are the same. It's either "Go here and talk to this guy" or "Go here and kill this guy/these guys". Always. Sometimes you'll have to deliver a message, or retrieve an object, to spice things up.

Fortunately there are other quests that don't involve any of the factions. "Yay!", right? No. These quests are even worse, and just plain pathetic. You might find someone along the road. You talk to them. They say, "please save my husband from monsters!". You, being the big hero, go and search for the husband, and you find him "trapped" by a few near-harmless monsters. Whack-whack-whack, he's saved, you bring him back, and your reward? A useless amulet. Or a useless ring. Or a useless ring with a useless enchantment. If you're not "rescuing" people in these non-faction quests, it's escorting them somewhere, and that's where the hell really lies. The pathfinding in Morrowind is awful. When escorting someone somewhere, you'll want to stay as close to them as possible, because if you take a step or two ahead of them, they suddenly get lost and will either run around in circles, run up a hill, turn around and run back to where they started, or get stuck somewhere. It's better just to kill them and take whatever pathetic reward they would give you when you brought them the whole mile down the road they were headed.

The game is very unbalanced in your favor. It's a wonder the monsters exist at all on Morrowind, as you'd think a bunch of angry farmers with pitchforks would have eradicated them all. Got some armor? Can you swing a sword? Then you can conquer the island! By level 10, most monsters will be dying with a single swipe of your sword/cast of your spell, even on high difficulty levels. You are unmatched, even in early stages of the game. Your only threat in the game is the mages, as they can cast spells that can lower your strength to the point where even your armor is too heavy to carry. But if your opponent is not a magic caster, you have nothing to fear, for if you're a fighter, you can win. Always. Unless you spent all your time in the game with a dagger and suddenly decided to switch to a broadsword for this battle, you have nothing to fear. Even if the difficulty is cranked up, you'll still win. If you're a mage, then just cast your spell and run. Cast and run. Cast and run. The only thing you have to worry about is your fatigue or mana running out, and unless you were out of both when you fought, you're going to win. And hey, if you're about to lose, just exit the dungeon. The monsters never (I mean never. They can't.) follow you outside. It gives you time to rest and rejuvenate, then go back in swinging/casting.

The game isn't unbalanced in your favor just for fighting. No: thieving has never been easier! Want that sword but just can't afford it? Is your steal skill nonexistent? No problem! Just move around the corner, behind a barrel, whatever! Just as long as nobody can see you. If nobody can see you, you can steal, unlock, take whatever you want, and nobody'll be the wiser, as long as you don't try and sell it back to them. And if you can't arrange yourself so you're not seen, just cast a chameleon spell and you can take things right in front of them and they won't notice.

As I said before, the architecture in Morrowind is very detailed and impressive, but it gets to the point where it's just excessive. There are parts in the game that look like it was designed by Picasso after dropping acid. While many of the areas look nice, they're completely impractical and near impossible to navigate. Fortunately, your map does tell you where entrances to buildings are located, and that is incredibly helpful.

I was too harsh. The insanely designed areas are few, and the inhabitants are somewhat mysterious, so that is certainly forgivable, especially in light of the other flaws of Morrowind. Like the caves. Yes, I said the caves were nice in Morrowind, and they are, but they're all nearly identical. How many caves, dungeons, tombs and mines are there in Morrowind? Too many to count. But once you've seen two of each, you've seen them all. Most caves (aside from quest-specific caves) start out the same. "Go down, then to the left. Then you'll enter an open area with a platform, some thieves, and some boxes. Go left. You'll come to another opening that leads to two more areas. One area leads to a dead end. The other leads to another platform area with another passageway." and so on. There is some variety. Sometimes you go left, instead of right. but the caves are all built identical, and it gets annoying very quickly. Instead of entering caves to explore, as you did in the beginning, you'll be entering caves to see what types of bad guys in it to see if there's anything worth going in for. Tombs are built like this as well, but considering they were built for a reason, it's acceptable.

The combat system downright stinks. It was slightly improved with a recent patch that made the enemy's health visible, but it has a long way to go before it's any good. It couldn't be more dull. Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. Attack. All you do is swing your sword or cast spells. You might take a second to drink a potion. You don't have to worry about blocking, because if you have a shield it does that for you. Battles are often quick and boring. Find your opponent and whack at him until he does. Or, if you're a mage, cast spells and run around.

Dialogue in the game gets the job done, but is still disappointing. There are no dialogue trees are voice-overs, except for the initial insult they usually spit out. The entire dialogue consists of topics you can ask about and they'll tell you what they know. If you bribe them a bit, they'll sometimes tell you more, but usually only if it's specifically quest-related. Every NPC has their own "ask me about me" set of dialogue options, which sounds more like a personal's ad than anything else. "I am a knight. Knights are good and powerful. I am a lizard. Lizards are green and scaly. I like to fish, I like to dance." Just an example, but it's what they sound like.

For some quests you have to get information out of someone. To do this you have to raise their disposition toward you, by "persuading" them. You can either bribe then 10, 100, or 1,000 gold, admire them, or try your luck at intimidating them. Unless your speechcraft skill is very high, your best bet would be to bribe them with money, as anyone can be bought.

A personal annoyance in the game is the fact that there are neither any flat lands nor forests. Everywhere you travel, it's rolling hill after rolling hill, if not a scorched mountain or a swamp, and the swamp is the closest you'll find to a forest. Granted, the island of Morrowind is basically a giant volcano, but forests would have been nice. Also, there are no cliffs at all in the game. Every mountainside is shallow enough that you can slide down without taking any damage at all. I would have liked to have seen (particularly on the mountainside) a cliff near impossible to scale, where dangerous creatures and winds attempt to throw you off. But that's just a personal thing - there was a lot more I would have liked to have seen.

There aren't very many types of monsters, and many of the cool ones from previous Elder Scrolls games weren't included. While you can become a vampire in Morrowind, you can't become a werewolf. Also, instead of a somewhat humorous list of various diseases you could contract in Daggerfall, you're only left with "disease" and "blight" in Morrowind.

There is certainly more flaws in the game, but most of them are minor.

The Bottom Line
The story is okay, and the graphics are wonderful. If you want to play by your own rules and have a very large island to do it on, this will be a great game for you. But with bad and repetetive quests and more flaws than you can shake a Daedric Dai-Katana at, I'd recommend waiting until it's in the bargain bin.

However, the game ships with a fully functional editor, so maybe someone can right all the wrongs before Bethesda gets greedy and releases an expansion for the game.

***

Good:
+Nonlinear gameplay.
+Great graphics.
+Great music.
+Progressive RPG elements (your acrobatics skill increases if you jump a lot, etc.).
+Multiple races to choose from.
+Comes with construction kit.
+And easy mod installment interface.
+You can be a vampire!
Neutral:
oSystem specs can be quite steep, but very rewarding if you have a good computer.
oStory could be better, but it gets the job done. It's not like the story is the main focus of the game. Evil:
-Way too easy.
-Worst journal system to date.
-Uninspired quests with little diversity.
-VIVEC!
-Lack of cool monsters from Daggerfall.
-Undiverse landscape.
-Boring NPCs.
Score:
7.5/10 Despite all that's bad about it, the graphics and the music and the atmosphere really lure me in. With the right mods, this game could be good.

The Good
This game is BIG. It's graphics are BEST. There tons of activities, tons of possibilities and tons of stuff to collect. You can always play it again and again and choose different paths, its almost impossible to get bored. The music is perfect

The Bad
When I first read the review of Morrowind in a local computer zine, I was only thinking about one thing: I NEED THAT GAME. It was in Summer 2002, and I even couldn't imagine that my dream would come true. My PC was Pentium 166, so I figured it'll take years to get a new PC (I didn't have any money). But in February 2003, my dreams came true: I bought a normal, 1700MHz PC. By that time I had forgotten about Morrowind and one day I started reading about it again and went out and bought the game. When I was coming home from the shop I already imagined it: my char wondering around Morrowind, slaying stuff. But when I installed it, and started the game, I was disappointed. Why you ask? The game itself is good. REAL good. BUT. All the NPCs are just standing there. They aren't doing anything. Even the badguys aren't lurking around (except wild "animals"), they are just standing there and waiting for you. When I first saw Syena Need (sorry I don't remember the exact name but It's the first town you see in Morrowind) I thought those people were zombies because all they did was walked around and said "Make it quick outlander, I havent got much time". Why are they so boring? Why Bethseda was working on Morrowind for 6 years and didn't make NPCs more active?!?!! Even Ultima 9 has that! That is the worst part of this game.

The Bottom Line
Although it has it's setbacks, this game is good. It has excellent graphics and sound and a lot of activities to do. Buy it!

The Good
First things first: I loved Arena. I loved Daggerfall. And I tried so hard to love this game, but I failed. The best things about this game is its story and its world, that's basically a continuation of the first Elder Scrolls games. Other than that, there's not much to like about this game. I will explain why.

The Bad
Morrowind is a huge game. It is huge and extremely open ended. Now both these descriptions are usually used to point out the good things about a game. But not this time! Morrowind manages to make both huge and open ended be bad things. The game is so huge the developers ran out of juice after, like, the first village. The rest of the game is bland, generic and colourless. Also, since there's no speech and no real physics system, the game feels horribly dead. The npc's are even worse. No matter who you talk to in the entire game, they always say the same things! If you would talk to a child (there are no children in Morrowind by the way!) you'd get exactly the same, detailed descriptions about the world as if you were talking to the village elder. Everyone, and I mean everyone, seems to know everything about everything.

For some reason this game is well known for its graphics. The same graphics that look bland and yet drives even the meanest gaming computers to its knees. The viewing distance is short and the human models look like.. monsters. Oh, right. The monsters. Take a stroll through the wonderfully repetitive landscape of Morrowind and within ten minutes you will have fought at least ten flying lizard birds. And so it goes on and on and on. Should I mention the equipment? It's incredibly easy to get hold of and since the economic system doesn't work, it's unsellable. You start at level 1 in the game. 20 minutes later you'll be level 10. Around three hours later you'll be level 20 and have most attributes and equipment maxxed out. And if you don't want to wait that long there are trainers that can train you to max in every skill in the game. Practical? Yes. Fun? NO.

A bad game can still be saved by a strong story and fun quests. Does Morrowind have any of these? Unfortunately, no. Most side quests consist of you getting item X to character Y and as a reward you get the useless item Z. Repeat forever, since there are lots and lots of these quests in the game. Due to its open endedness the game feels totally unfocused and there's nothing to drag you into the story. After about an hour of playing you will have forgotten what the hell you're even doing in the game world. And after you've completed the game you'll be feeling confused, empty and disappointed because you will still not have grasped why you did everything you did.

And on top of all of this, the game is way too easy, it has lots of show stopping bugs, suffers from minimal dungeons and it isn't even true to the world set up by the previous games.

The Bottom Line
After buying and playing Daggerfall in the mid nineties I was eagerly awaiting Morrowind as soon as I first heard of it. It took the game five years to arrive (I think) and when it came out it turned out to be this. I don't think I have ever been so disappointed in my entire life when it comes to a computer game. Fortunately for me I found the excellent Gothic game series instead.

The Good
...and nothing more to it, really. Granted, a walk like that can be fairly interesting for a while, much like being in an enigmatic dream that may or may not just turn into a nightmare. Thus your walk may be intriguing up to the point that you visited all the highlights, set pieces like 'The Quiet Fishing Village', the 'Dark Foreboding Tomb', 'The City With The Weird Architecture' and so forth. But then you realize that this is a 'hands off' kind of theme park, there are no interactive elements; sure, you can enter the caves and houses but their residents are the dullest androids ever, each repeating the same lines. Sometimes radio-controlled creatures seem to attack you but they feel fake and out of place. You soon feel that you had enough; it's one lifeless, soulless park.

The Bad
Morrowind just doesn't work as a game. Without repeating all the agreeable criticism of the previous reviews I'll just emphasize what is possibly the ultimate cause of the title's failure: stock dialogues. NPC conversations are normally the life and soul of an RPG and these were removed due to a highly regrettable design choice. Either that or Bethesda's complete lack of writing skills and NPC-related imagination. Was Ultima7 the last game that got it all right?..

The Bottom Line
Here's hoping that Bethesda learns the error of their ways and Oblivion will actually be an enjoyable role-playing game with unique, believable NPCs.

The Good
After some playing, what strikes me the most with Morrowind is it's great overall open ended feeling, both positively and negatively. You can walk to wherever you want and do the quests you want to do, in any order you want. It's fun just traveling the island and chance upon an impressive castle or some old ruins to explore. And with some skill in lockpicking even breaking into some house in the city and steal the money can be good fun sometimes. The freedom to play around is very creative and stimulating for the imagination. That also applies to the creation of your character, which can be tailored very much to your liking. And as each of the main professions has its own guild on the island there is the possibility to join one of them and do quests for them. There are even vampire clans to join! Like a lot of other RPG's the game is full of details, like books and stuff, and if you decide to steal something and someone spots you, you lose reputation points. And it's not to good to be low on reputation as it makes it difficult to talk to the NPC's.

What I really like about this game is that even after you have finished the main quest you can continue playing, which is to the credit of the creators and shows that they really had a vision of a game as open ended as possible. This is something I have missed in a lot of other games because I always wanted to have the chance to keep playing with my favourite character even after I had finished. To be true, there is no real end to this game, and in that sense it is truly open ended in the best sense of the word.

To top it off, the graphics are very nice with beautiful water effects and the day has its rotation with light and darkness. During the night you can see the stars shining in the night sky, and inside the houses there are burning fireplaces and candles, in contrast to the shadows which adds much to the nice atmosphere.

The Bad
There was ONE big problem that kept me from wanting to play. The landscape of Vvardenfell is boring. A dead wasteland with huge funguses and giant insects that serves as transports between the cities. Everything is brown and colourless. Highly uninspiring, and I don't understand why the designers wanted such a world, blah. A lot of the NPC's lack personality and are rather repetitive in their dialogue. The creatures of the island spawn very randomly and that doesn't feel very realistic. This is a feature of these kind of open ended games but doesn't feel very good implemented here.

To increase a skill you can practice that skill in the game in real time. So if you want to improve your acrobatics skill, all you have to do is jump all the way to your destination and it will increase. Interesting thought but quite silly in practice. If it had been better implemented it could have worked. You also advance in combat with experience and here it works better except that in the beginning you are so bad at fighting that when you encounter a hostile rat on your first journey, you have to fight like a tiger not to get killed. And that even if you are armed with a sword. Sure, you get better at fighting with increasing experience, but having problems with bashing a rat. Give me a break.

The Bottom Line
As I said, the environment was the biggest obstacle for me to enjoy this game, which is sad because it IS an exciting game in itself despite all of it's flaws which are inherent in this series of games, and stems from having such an open endedness. I personally prefer the island in the expansion Bloodmoon which has more traditional forest terrain.