The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (Xbox) > Reviews (18)

Depth and beauty, two words which are applied all too rarely to computer games, the main strength of Morrowind is that it has both and combines them with a wonderfully original and believable open ended playing world. In short it achieves what in my opinion every RPG should.

I have never considered myself a game addict or anything like that, I enjoy playing on the X-Box or PS2 on weekends and know a good bit about games but I’m not exactly the type of person whose head is in his computer 24/7. This all changed when I discovered TES III: Morrowind.

Graphics and Sound

When I got the game home and began to play the first thing that hit me was the amazing graphics. The game begins with the main character (who incidentally you design entirely by selecting gender, race and physical and mental traits) waking up on a prison transport heading for the isle of Morrowind. Firstly the level of detail on the items and people inside the ship struck me but the real shock hit me when I got on deck, the ship floated beside the dock the sun shimmered on the ripples as they lapped gently against the side of the ship whilst it banged slowly against it’s mooring (All of the above accompanied by accurate sound effects) I could see the land of Morrowind, rolling green hills shrouded in a blanket of fog in front of me. This was so amazing that I thought it was a CG sequence or some other special sequence, It took me an hour or two to accept that this was the high standard of the game. The graphics squeeze every little bit of juice from the X-box’s huge processor to place you in an amazing abstract, yet believable environment.

Control Interface

Once you have gotten over the beautiful graphics that give the illusion that the character is stuck in an abstract renaissance masterpiece the next thing to get to grips with is the control system, it does take time as the depth of the game requires a fairly complicated control system but it is well worth getting past this obstacle and discovering the massive array of delights the game has to offer.

Character Improvement System

One important aspect of every RPG is the character improvement system, seeing as improving your character is one of the main aims of every RPG this needs to be good, Morrowind’s is second to none. It is an improvement on the basic level up to get better skills system, this metaphor is about the same as saying that the Nuclear reactor is an improvement on rubbing two sticks together to make fire. The character improvement system is so in-depth that it would take me a 3000 word essay to explain it all and yet it is amazingly easy to get to grips with given a little time. Basically each character has 8 innate attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality and Luck, these each effect how you play the game in an individual way as well as effecting your health, magika, fatigue and the total weight you can lift, they can be improved as you level up. As well as these attributes there are 27 skills which are governed by the attributes, improve these skills by using them: i.

e. when the player uses destructive magic often their destruction skill will increase fast or if they do not use the long sword this skill area will grow slowly. This is just the basic structure and there is much more depth to the system.

The Game World

Morrowind places the player on a huge island crammed with living individuals and creatures to interact with. The people make decisions about how much they like you based on your past and appearance and respond to you appropriately, it really feels like you have real friends and enemies in this game and it is important to keep a good balance of these acquaintances. People react based on things like your appearance, race, guilds you are part of and much more and can be interacted with in many different ways, but watch out because in this game every action can have an array of consequences, joining a guild gets you many friends but also enemies and robbing someone does damage to their relationship with you (fairly obvious but there we go). As well as people there are many different creatures in Morrowind and each acts in a distinctive way many attack you but some are tame, some use magic whilst others just all out attack some are even territorial.

The places in Morrowind are as varied and individual as the people; from the prison moon above Vivec to the seedy clubs of Balmora to the grassy plains of the northeast there are different experiences to be had. Traveling around gives you many different experiences and lets you meet a range of different people. Whilst you are traveling the world you can choose a vocation: You may want to join a guild and begin to climb the ranks towards guild leader, or you could be an alchemist and spend your time searching for ingredients to make potions and selling them off for prophet you can even take up diving for pearls or Tomb raiding to earn some cash and find something useful at the same time. The point I am trying to get across is that Morrowind does not have a simple storyline, it places you in a huge world with thousands of possibilities and lets you do whatever you want and I find that concept amazing.

Difficulty

Whatever you want, simple as. If you feel confident you can venture into the dangerous central region of Morrowind or otherwise you could just stick it out in the towns, From felling powerful evils to pickpocketing ignorant nobles the game is it’s own reward, it gets more interesting the more you play and the more adept you become.

Other formats: PC
Developer: Bethesda Softworks
Others in series: Arena and Daggerfall
Genre: RPG (Open-ended)

If you like to have your own way in a game then go buy it now. It’s riveting and lets you write your own story in a huge, believable gaming world.