The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

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
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
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.