The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Enormous adventures
Morrowind is the third installment in Elder Scrolls series by Bethesda Softworks. The previous parts, Arena & Daggerfall were promising but lacked the goods for a truly great game despite of their potential. For example, Daggerfall had a huge world to explore, but it fell short on the randomly generated dungeons which had the appeal and soul of accounting software. Like its predecessors, Morrowind promised a enormous playing area which allows players to do almost anything they wish.
A leap of faithThe game starts with the player character being transported Morrowind by a ship. You’ve been convicted for unknown crime but now ordered to be released. As you leave the ship, you proceed with character creation. First you’ll be asked your name and you’ll get to pick the gender and race as well. After that it’s time to choose your character class. There are three different ways to do this: 1. you can answer a set of questions which determine your class, 2. you simply pick a class you like or 3. create a custom class.
When these steps are completed, you’re given more instructions of the games interface and background story. You’ll also receive your first mission: to deliver a certain package to a person living in town of Balmora. Then you’ll get to walk freely in the streets. Whether you choose to do the given task is up to you, nobody is forcing you. You could choose to explore the world instead or seek out assignments from other people. There’s a main storyline but the game’s no way linear, and you can always find something else to do if you don’t feel like following the storyline.
Shiny water is goodGraphically Morrowind is spectacular at best. Owners of pixel shader capable graphics cards such as GeForce 3 and Radeon 8500 (oh and that Xbox thingy qualifies too, I guess…) can enjoy the shiny water effect which makes the water effects look very realistic. Graphics are thoroughly well done and the only slight criticism goes to the walk animations of player and other characters, who walk like never oiled robots, but this is a minor annoyance. (Maybe they’re just wearing reaaaally tight clothes, that’d explain everything, right?).
Usually a game with great graphics has a downside of high system requirements and Morrowind is no exception. Get ready for low framerates if you’re running the game with anything less than 1000Mhz (I haven’t seen the Xbox-version but laws of logical reasoning tell me it’s optimized pretty thoroughly. If it isn’t, Xbox owners are screwed). Options allow you to adjust the graphics pretty well, but if you’re not satisfied with a view distance of a near-sighted bat it’s better to have a fast cpu.
Impressive sceneryItem collector’s dream
First person view is the default one, but you can easily switch to a third person view which works just as well on most occasions. 3rd person view is good when you need to see a little more of the world around you (when jumping on platforms, for example) while 1st person view works best on battles, especially when using ranged attacks.
Battles occur in real time and consist of beating the mouse button to use magic or weapons. Nothing that’s never seen before but the system works well. Enemy AI isn’t the master of battle strategies but battles usually provide challenge – especially is your character isn’t particularly skilled with weapons, like the one I’m playing with…
It’s not the clothes that matter,it’s the attitude
One thing that I especially like in Morrowind is the fact that you can collect almost anything. in addition to regular stuff you find in every RPG, like weapons, books, potions, shields etc. Morrowind offers dozens of more. You can loot almost everything from peoples homes like knives and forks(!), books, food, vases. You can buy lots of different clothing form stores. Forests are filled with mushrooms and flowers (you can use them to make potions, for example). In short, the world is not only detailed but the of the stuff there isn’t simply a nice decoration.
To make sure people recognize this as a true Bethesda project, there are a few annoying bugs here and there. They include mostly spontaneous levitation, but I’ve occasionally encountered a few which make the game crash back to desktop. Nothing that a update can’t fix but still frustrating to run on to. On the other hand I have to praise Morrowind for its creative programming bugs. It was rather amusing to see a villager crossing a lake by walking on top of the water. Watching a guard on stand on his post was fun too, mostly because he floated one feet high in the air. So far I’ve also managed to get stuck on a signpost which certainly wasn’t one of my characters top heroic deeds.
Our skilled friend, the Levitating Wizard,finds something worth fixing for the next update
Bugs aside, Morrowind is an entertaining game. Story’s good, graphics are great and music isn’t bad either (the game’s got too few music tracks though, same ones get played again and again. Another game suffering from Super Mario Bros 2 syndrome…). Controls are easy to use and the interface is mostly logical. If you enjoy computer RPGs, give Morrowind a go.
The world is HUGE and it’ll take a long time just to walk from one side to another. And if you’re fed up with current trend of games being too short, Morrowind’s definitely your game.