The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

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
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 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!