Games Review :: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Gaming system: PC
Genre: Role Playing Game

Minimum system requirements:

• Windows ME/98 128 MB RAM
• Windows XP/2000 256 MB RAM
• 500 MHz Intel Pentium III, Celeron, or AMD Athlon processor
• 8x CD/DVD-ROM Drive
• 1 GB free hard disk space
• Windows swapfile
• DirectX 8.1 (included)
• 32MB Direct3D compatible video card with 32-bit color support and DirectX 8.1 compatible driver
• DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card
• Keyboard, Mouse

Recommended:

• 800 MHz or faster Intel Pentium III or AMD Athlon processor
• 256 MB RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce2 GTS, or ATI Radeon 7500 or faster video card.

Morrowind is the third part of Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls series. You are a person whose parents are unknown, and you are sent as a prisoner to the town of Seyda Neen in the Vvardenfell region of Morrowind, a province of the Empire of Tamriel, the civilisation from Cyrodiil that brought peace and prosperity, but also corruption and poverty to the provinces they conquered. They are clearly inspired by the ancient Roman Empire, which becomes clear by their Legions and the names of Imperials. Morrowind’s native population consists of the Dark Elves, or “Dunmer” as they call themselves. Outlanders of lots of different races have settled themselves in Vvardenfell, like the cat-like Khajjit, the reptilian Argonians, and human races like the dark Redguard, the Bretons, the barbaric Nords from Skyrim and of course the Cyrodiil, or Imperials. There are also Dunmer who aren't from Morrowind, and who are regarded with even more contempt by the natives than other outlanders.

The setting of the game is that of a district full of corruption and hidden agendas. In the realm of Tamriel, there are five Great Houses of the Dunmer, of which three have already settled down in Tamriel. They all represent certain shady interests, and are all good for a certain type of character. Besides them, there's also the imperial guilds and the native Dunmer guilds, not to mention the religious sects of both the Empire and the natives.

As you start, you will get to create a character of one of the aforementioned races(although the character will always be an outlander, you can’t be a native for story reasons), you get to decide certain skills your character will have more points in at the start, and a zodiac sign that also dictates certain stats and powers you will start with, and in some cases disadvantages. You then get to explore Vvardenfell, engaging in quests, slaying beasts on the way and acquiring new equipment, weapons, clothes, potions, spells etc etc. Magickal items can be found too, and there are lots of trainers about to improve your skills.

The graphics of Morrowind are impressive to say the least. The cozy imperial settlements with fortresses and shipyards, and the small port towns among the western Bitter Coast. The grand Vivec, which actually consists of several large buildings that are all cities of their own. The native Dunmer settlements in the west and north, and not to mention the towers of the Telvanni wizards in the east. However, even if you put the draw distance to its maximum, you will still see buildings, mountains and trees popping up in the background, which is kind of a shame. Also, the characters don't quite look perfect either, especially their movements. There are shadows, but they're butt ugly. Nevertheless, Bethesda has succeeded in making a beautiful world that will absorb you in spite of some flaws.

The gameplay is open-ended. Even when you’re finished, you can still do all you like, spend your time on quests you haven’t bothered to yet, improving your skills etc. The game is not linear at all. Of course the main quest thread keeps progressing in a linear fashion, but you’re never forced to do a certain part of the main quest. You can just continue it at your own pace, whenever you want, which is a good thing since the main quest can be quite hard if you don't want to move the difficulty slider down. This difficulty slider ranges from -100(easiest) to 100(hardest), making 0 the medium difficulty. I only own some special edition which comes with the latest patch, and it seems the slider only works with that patch, so get that from www.elderscrolls.com if you're not sure if you have it yet!

In the meantime you can do lots of other quests, for the guilds you’re in or for the Great House you’ve joined (you can only be in one at a time, unless you abuse a bug that has been fixed in a patch). However, sometimes quests can be quite annoying, especially when you have to escort a person. These people always tend to move VERY slowly, so you keep having to wait for them to catch up, and are quite vulnerable to enemies. To travel the vast world of Morrowind more quickly, there are some means of public transport, like the huge insect-like silt strider, or a mages guild teleportation system. If that all fails you can of course also just take a good old-fashioned boat. It's a shame that you don't actually see those transports moving, instead the screen will just fade to black and you'll re-appear at your destination.

The sound is quite good. The quality is decent and although many may be disappointed that the characters aren’t constantly speaking, and that you only get text conversation instead, I think it’s a good thing, because the text stays there and you can skim it quickly instead of having to listen to a person talk all the time. The music is beautiful, but alas there are only a few tracks, some for exploration and some for battle scenes, so having to listen to the same music all the time gets annoying.

This brings me to my conclusion, which is that Morrowind is a fantastic and graphically imposing game, despite some graphical flaws, mainly because of the mysterious and surreal environment (your jaw will drop when you visit the first city of House Telvanni in the east). The great interaction with NPCs, though kept simple, are unrealistic since you can just click the topic you want to talk about, and the NPC starts with a whole monologue. This doesn’t really make sense, but it’s simple and you can easily skim, and you don’t have to ask a lot of things all the time. The sound, as said before, is magnificent, the few music tracks are still beautiful in their own right. So, here are my ratings:

Graphics: 8.5/10
Sound: 8.5/10
Replay value/length: 9.5/10
Gameplay: 9/10