The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Moby ID: 6280
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Freed by the decree of Uriel Septim VII, the Emperor of Tamriel, a lone prisoner is transported to the province of Morrowind. It seems that the strange dreams this prisoner has been having lately may have a connection to equally strange events occurring there. The protagonist is given a simple assignment: join the Blades, a secret organization whose goal is to protect the safety of the Emperor. This leads to a discovery of an ancient prophecy and an evil scheme concocted by a powerful deity whom the protagonist alone is able to stop.

Conceived in the tradition of the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind is a fantasy role-playing game with a vast world open for exploration. After being released from a prison ship at the shores of the island Vvardenfell, the protagonist may do more or less what he or she wants: follow the main quest and solve the mystery of an ancient prophecy, join any of roughly a dozen guilds and rise in their hierarchy by performing duties, or simply explore the gigantic island with its stylistically diverse cities, hundreds of dungeons and tombs, ancient ruins and mighty fortresses.

Morrowind uses a two-stage skill system. The hero’s primary stats (strength etc.) increase with each level gained, while secondary abilities improve by use – for example, the more often the character jumps, the more proficient he or she becomes in the Acrobatics skill, etc. The action-oriented fights are simple exchanges of strikes or spells, until one combatant dies. The enemy's hit points and condition were not originally shown; however, at the request of customers a health bar was added for enemies as part of the first upgrade patch.

The protagonist's race and gender, but also his or her reputation influence the reactions of NPCs. If a character’s sympathy for the hero is low (rated on a scale from 1 to 100), he might refuse to answer questions; if it is high, the player will get more detailed information and better bargains in shops. Most quests involving other persons can be solved by persuasion, pick-pocketing, or simply by force.

The game's NDL 3D game engine is powerful in drawing wide, detailed outdoor landscapes as well as complex indoor environments. Transitions are not fluent; houses and dungeons must be loaded upon entering.

Spellings

  • 上古卷轴III:晨风 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 上古捲軸 III:魔捲晨風 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Credits (Windows version)

118 People (80 developers, 38 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 89% (based on 83 ratings)

Players

Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 283 ratings with 23 reviews)

Bethesda software has come up with the single greatest game ever...

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.

Windows · by ThE oNe (180) · 2002

Never since Ultima 7 has a game been so expansive

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.

Windows · by Sam Hardy (80) · 2003

A beautiful and rich game setting stunted by inexcusable game design flaws.

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.

Windows · by Droog (460) · 2002

[ View all 23 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Add Game Group karnak1 (22) Dec 24, 2012
Morrowind vs. Oblivion Unicorn Lynx (181780) Jul 26, 2007

Trivia

1001 Video Games

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Content

Morrowind is told to include 3244 NPCs, 316.042 hand placed objects, 480 billion possible characters to create and play, 150 billion spells by using spellmaking in the game, and six full sized novels worth of text.

Creature differences

Some monsters and creatures went through drastic visual changes from Daggerfall and Battlespire to Morrowind. First, the type of khajiit are the same as those presented in Redguard, while the Dremora were turned from fair-skinned, horned demons to black and red-skinned demons. Harpies were replaced with (visually at least) Winged Twilights, and other monsters such as the slaughterfish, orcs and others remain much the same, though much better looking in true 3D.

Graphics

Ever wonder why Morrowind can run at such a slow FPS sometimes and why the game is notorious for making even expensive, fast systems (as of 2004) seem slow? The answer is simple; polygons. While playing the game you'll encounter vast areas full of people, objects and architecture. All these are made from polygons and require the videocard to process them. Morrowind has possibly the heaviest counts of polygons in a single video game, most likely surpassing every game before it and still with a vast number more than contemporary games.

References

There is a single daedric crescent from Battlespire hidden in Morrowind, but getting to it requires some work and initiative (it isn't a part of any main or faction quest), or access to a hint guide.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2002 – #9 Best PC Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Games Magazine
    • March 2003 (Issue #148) - #3 overall in the "10 Best Games of 2002" list
  • Computer Gaming World
    • April 2003 (Issue #225) – RPG of the Year
  • GameSpy
    • 2002 - PC RPG of the Year
    • 2011 – #14 Top PC Game of the 2000s
  • RPG Vault
    • 2002 - Game of the Year
    • 2002 - Role-Playing Game of the Year

Information also contributed by calavera, Jason Musgrave, ShadowStrike and WildKard

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by NeoMoose.

Xbox One added by Kennyannydenny. Xbox Cloud Gaming added by Sciere.

Additional contributors: PCGamer77, -Chris, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, OFoglada, Shoddyan, Sciere, Aubustou, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, FatherJack, Kennyannydenny.

Game added May 10, 2002. Last modified March 7, 2024.