Reviewed: August 8, 2002
Reviewed by: Alan Smith
Publisher
Bethesda Softworks
Developer
Bethesda Softworks
Released: June 4, 2002
Genre: RPG
Players: 1
ESRB: Teen
8
8
9
10
9.0
Supported Features
Have you always felt your true calling was to be a knight on a noble quest? Does therapy mean unleashing your evil doppelganger on the unsuspecting populace of Simtown? Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is the one place that offers all this in a polished and expansive role-playing game for the Xbox.
The story of Morrowind always begins the same way. With nothing more in your pockets than your good health, you are set free on the island of Vvardenfell. Your imagination, intelligence, and sense of adventure determine what happens next. You can become a master of magic, or perish a petty thief.
Unlike many of the role playing games released recently, Morrowind does not force you to walk a narrow pathway leading from one cinematic cut-scene to the next. In Morrowind, you choose your race, you choose your skill, and you choose your quest. Feel like exploring on foot today? Be mindful of the unseen and the unexpected. And be advised that it is best to be off the trail by nightfall.
Are you in hurry? Then book passage on a Silt Strider, those giant insect creatures that provide fast transport between the southern and western cities. Build your character into a swaggering rogue with fighting skills to take all comers, or if the dark arts are in your soul, seek out masters willing to teach you the ways of the sorcerer. Your own preconceptions will prove far more limiting than Morrowind will.
Character selection can be strictly your choice, or you can answer a series of questions designed to discover your latent talents and have a suitable character created for you. Each character is endowed with eight major attributes, such as strength, intelligence, and luck. These are further modified through the experience your character gains as the game is played.
The real time attributes of health, magic, fatigue, and encumbrance are displayed as bar graphs that rise and fall with your immediate situation. On-demand menus display your armor, weapon selection, spells, and magical items. Also handy is your personal journal, which maintains a chronological record of your quest for future reference. Skill and Legend books that your may find (or steal) on your journey are also readily accessible.
There is a map view that expands with each new area you explore. Casting spells, performing enchantments, and the use of magical items are all handled by largely textual menus. The need for a good quality television with at least an S-video input is very important to your enjoyment of this game.
Weapons are the traditional hack and slash armaments such as maces, broadswords, and crossbows. There are no hidden flame-throwers or depleted uranium mini-guns to be discovered in a damp dungeon. If you want more power than these weapons offer, then I just have one word for you - magic!
Here there be spells to summon creatures, spells to shower lighting on your foes, and spells to trap a creature’s soul. Fifty-five different spells in all, which is quite the large bag of magic tricks, and demonstrates the depth of detail the game system in Morrowind offers, far more detail then I expected to find.
The toll extracted by all this geeky goodness is reading and frequently referring to the game’s fifty-page manual. Thankfully the guys and gals over at Bethesda Softworks provided a concise and nicely illustrated manual. It briefly introduces the history of Morrowind, and clearly explains how to play the game. Also included is a large map of the Island of Vvardenfell. Serious players will want to rip their JLo and Britney posters down and pin this baby up.
Really hardcore players intent on “completing” the game will want to check out “The Morrowind Prophecies”. This three hundred and seventy page strategy guide is also published by Bethesda Softworks; it contains interior maps, secret information on creatures, and a comprehensive listing of the alternative quests available. Did you know that Morrowind offers ten major sub-quests, plus regional and thematic quests, and even a romantic quest?
The first person shooter gets by with a minimum number of controls. But the role-playing game with magic and dialogue has complexity that suddenly makes game control and interface design a real big deal. I found the Morrowind game system to be surprisingly easy to learn and intuitive in use. The many control points offered by the Xbox controller are put to excellent use, and all the frequently used game functions are just a single push, pull, or click away. I did not miss the keyboard at all.
Hand to hand combat consists of chopping, slashing, and thrusting attacks controlled by the right trigger. I found these few moves limited and simplistic. As a result combat sequences are not particularly exciting to watch from either the first or third person camera views. This is no Street Fighter.
Liberal use of refection, smoke, and transparency effects give the game a sufficiently convincing otherworldly look. Blue sky, wispy clouds, and distance fog all work together to blend long views into a convincing horizon. There is little popup in evidence with the exception of the overgrown mushroom trees that loom from the gloom in the deep forest. Water is everywhere, in the form of rain, rivers, and the surrounding ocean. Surface ripples and sparkling reflected light showcase the Xbox nVidia chipset at it’s best.
Underwater swimming views have just the right amount of shimmer to be convincing. Panning views are lag free and interior walls are well detailed with texture patterns. Bridges, doorways, stairwells, and interior fixtures appear to be almost in proper scale with each other, but still suffer from what I call the dollhouse effect. This is when the overall exterior size is too small for what is modeled inside the walls. Games suffer from the same problem television has - it’s difficult to make something look large on the small screen, without scaling the actor size down to a dot.
Characters are well detailed and colorful, but look stiff because of a limited number of joints and movement arcs. Load times and scene transitions tend to be slow, often slow enough to break the illusion of the game. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the Xbox platform, or if improved programming could reduce these times. What about it Bethesda?
One final complaint; early in the game I walked into a wall and got “stuck”. A reboot was required to free myself. It only happened once, but I was real sorry to see this old bug haunting us still.
This game features more dialogue than most, and it gives me great pleasure to report that the voice acting in Morrowind is completely professional. Voices match the characters, and they use enough accent and inflection to maintain the illusion.
The musical score follows the game situation, and although it reminds me of the Titanic theme song, it complements the action without being overwhelming or repetitious. If you don’t have a home theatre system for your Xbox, this game is all the reason you need to start shopping. Even my dog, who has heard it all, was fooled into looking behind the sofa when the sound FX started kicking.
For years I have built game computers with television and stereo outputs, and have never be completely satisfied with the results. When the PS2 and Xbox splashed down I thought at last the ultimate game computers had arrived. Only problem was, all the games felt like console games. Morrowind has changed all that. It plays with all the attention to detail and complexity of a computer game, and the graphics and sound have transformed my modest home theatre system into my game platform of choice.
For the standard Xbox game price of $50, Morrowind returns hundreds of hours of single player gaming. With more than 400 quests, thousands of NPCs, and thousands upon thousands of objects, weapons, magical items, and other treasures this is easily the biggest game on the Xbox and perhaps the largest game ever made. If entertainment is measured in hours per dollar, then Morrowind is the bargain of a lifetime.
The best part of live D&D gaming is the interaction with live people, and the unpredictability this creates. Multi-player online games attempt to simulate this by bringing live people together over the Internet. But meeting up with your buddies in person or in virtuality is not always easy.
Morrowind offers an expansive and unpredictable game of D&D for the single player. It is a world with thousands of encounters. Some encounters will be helpful, some will be distracting, and some will be dangerous. All will happen because of choices you make, which is why Morrowind is such an engaging game. This is the type of game you can fire up a few evenings a week, pick up where you left off, and feel right at home.