How Big Is Your Morrowind?
Written: Aug 11 '03 (Updated Aug 12 '03)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Unrivaled gaming experience. You are in control, the options nearly endless.
Cons: Lots of bugs and some infuriating game play issues.
The Bottom Line: Be the hero you always wanted. A fresh experience in Computer based roleplaying games. Memorable and addictive and worthy addition to any computer gaming library.
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| avepythagoras's Full Review: Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind For Windows |
A Sad State In Modern Gaming
There are few big innovations in the gaming world. Once something new comes along it is usually disseminated throughout the market, cloned and repackaged, ripped off and redone, until it is so common the original idea itself is lost, the novelty nothing more than common practice. In fact, I would argue that most computer games are little, if any different, from a few core products that were developed less than 15 years ago. Wolfenstein 3D and the 3rd person shooter, Dune II and real time strategy, Ultima and the CRPG, Wing Commander and the space shooter/simulator. There is nothing new under the sun. Most games copy the initial ideas of these games so blatantly that the gaming experience, if any, hasn't really changed much since these games were first introduced. Sure the graphics are better, the explosions more profound, the blood more real, but does that really change the gaming experience much? We're still playing the same games we played 15 years ago. We haven't seen anything new. Companies repackage and retool, but spend little time actually developing new concepts and new ideas. And the computer gaming world couldn't possibly be more stagnant.
But that has changed recently. Thank God. The new idea is free-form gaming, unlike previous games; the gamer is given an entire world to explore. And exploration is dynamic and open-ended; it practically gives the gamer seemingly endless possibilities. You can do whatever you want. Villain or hero, god or devil, criminal or cop. Whatever suits your fancy can be done...at least to within the limits of the gaming world itself. A few of these games have made quite an impact, like Grand Theft Auto and its newer brother Vice City. Others have been merely a small footnote, like the space-shooter Freelancer. Even so, the idea of free-form gaming hadn't fully blossomed. There were too many limitations. Sure you could walk around gunning down innocent bystanders; but, could you be the cop hunting down these crazy criminals or could you be that bystander would decides to pull a gun out and blast the criminal for reasons of self defense?
Steel Yourselves: This World is Dangerous
Enter The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Finally, a free-form gaming experience that is true to the name. And while Morrowind has elements of older games, it is, in essence, a 3-D shooter; the geniuses at Bethesda games have created a unique gaming experience unrivalled by anything presently on the market. Finally, you, the gamer, are in control. You have an entire world around you, an island the size of perhaps Hawaii, and you can go anywhere, steal anything, kill anyone. Or seek to stop others from committing such actions.
You are a prisoner mysteriously released by the Emperor upon the Morrowind Isle of Vvardenfell. You walk ashore, register with customs,--read create your character--and are told a man named Casius in some town Balmora has some work for you. The world unfolds around your character as an ancient prophecy begins to unfold. But, unlike other games, if you really don't care about the prophecy, you can wander off into the world with endless amounts of things to do, you can create your own story. To hell with all that ancient religious mythology, you have a life to live, a world to explore, and a fortune to procure. Just be cautious, you live in a dangerous world, full of unfriendly people, gruesome monsters, and fickle gods.
The Good:
This game has options. Endless options. If you don't like something, chances are you can change it, or find something better. For instance, there are ten different races with 21 different prefabricated character classes. Each character class has an assortment of skills that separate it from the rest, but, if you don't like the particular classes, you can create your own. You can tweak your character to fit your own gaming style. This is important because your character grows based on the skills s/he develops. The more you use a skill the more proficient your character will become and this correlates directly to the speed with which your character will level up. If you don't like using magic and your style is more hack and slash, don't start as a magic user, because it'll be harder to level up in warrior skills like long sword, spear and heavy armor. Or for that matter, if you are more into sneaking around, moving unseen from shadow to shadow, pick a thief or assassin. But remember: if you pick a character you need to act like that character, or else it will take forever to level up.
This dependency on skills provides an interesting RPG experience, as you actually have to become your character to survive. A thief will be wary of battle, but will have no qualms sneaking up behind a guard and inflicting a mortal wound. A mage user may not know how to work the tools, but s/he sure can find some strength in that awesome fireball or find some old scroll to magically pick locks and open trapped doors.
Further, your character is important because it will also relate to what you can accomplish in Morrowind. A thief will not be a talented soldier, and as such, joining the local legion won't get you very far. It's a large world; there are many niches that each particular character can fill. Stealthy thieves can join the thief guild, work as assassins, or provide thug support for the local Houses, that is, Morrowind's version of the mafia. Warriors can join the army, act as mercenaries, or freelance and pilfer dungeons and crypts, altars and ruins.
There is no end to what you can do with your characters, and as such, the game has a very high replay value. And not everything can be accomplished with any one particular character, so even having finished the actual storyline means nothing, you still have other factions and quests you couldn't finish because you decided to play as a wizard, warrior or assassin.
The graphics are solid: very crisp and unusual. The weather patterns are startling and realistic: sandstorms, thundershowers and fog are just a few. Each region of the island has different styles and cultures, and thus you'll see radically different sets of armor and clothing throughout. The landscape is beautiful with a fresh sense of fantasy. A settlement in the west uses houses made of hollowed fungus while others in the east make homes in the remains of a dead god-sized crab exoskeleton. You'll find ancient dwarven ruins, Imperial forts, and dingy fishing communities. This world has a distinct flavor with many memorable experiences incomparable to anything I have ever seen in a computer game, ever.
The Bad
And while this game hits on many levels, with a captivating control of the player experience, there is quite a bit wrong with it. The game play is slow. And while there are many ways to travel fast in Morrowind you'll have to do quite a bit of walking now and then. Many of the quests require you to travel about delivering needlessly trite objects. And while this was fun at first, it gets old very fast. Especially later on, when you have a high level character. And while there are many quests to accomplish, you'll find many to be carbon copies of previous quests. Gamers can only take so much redundancy, and then it starts to wear thin. At least you have the ability to refuse most quests without destroying your chances of finishing the main storyline.
This is a 3-D shooter, though you can change from 3rd perspective to 1st perspective. So despite all the original novelty, the game sufficiently copies from others, not entirely novel and innovative. And its hard to be effective with a bow or crossbow, because just aiming at the target correctly doesn't mean you'll hit it. Which is counter-intuitive to the 3-D shooter experience and takes some awhile to acclimate yourself.
I don't know how they calculate skill success in this game, but I found that you fail much more than you succeed, even when your skills are significantly high. Lock picking, bartering, persuading, shooting arrows. You will screw up a lot. And this gets very annoying, as the game world will be influenced by a couple of botched skill attempts. And this happens all to often. Even for high classed characters. And while its OK to have your skills fail once in a while, it really begins to get annoying when you have a lock-picking ability of 50 and you can't open a chest with a simple lock, even when using a masterly crafted lock pick.
This brings another problem. Locked chests and doors. Normally, you would think, being unable to unlock a treasure chest isn't the worst thing that could happen. You, after all, have a war hammer. Smash it open. In Morrowind you can't smash locked wooden chests open. And this is no good at all. Where's the realism? In a world such as this, I demand to be able to smash wooden chests!
There also seems to be a bias against mage-users. When I originally started playing, I played as a Sorcerer. I found that it takes forever to level up, because in order to do so, you must use your magic and cast spells. But casting spells requires mana, and once you run out of mana you must rest or find a mana potion. It took me hours to level up because of this. And good mana potions are hard to come by in Morrowind. This was disappointing, as I generally like to play wizards and Sorcerers. I think it would be better if the designers allowed mage-users the ability to gain in their skills when they learn new spells, it only makes sense. And it would quicken the pace of the game when you play as mage.
There are plenty of bugs in this game. You get stuck in odd corners, against walls, and sometimes you'll fall through the floor. The game freezes up every once and a while and even though I've downloaded all the patches, I still find instances where I'll jump over a table or some other object only to get stuck mid jump in a rather compromising position. Also, when you're walking through a narrow hallway there is no way to move a computer character out of the way. They just stand motionless, an impregnable pain in the a@@. What is needed is an 'excuse me' or 'pardon me' command to get them to move along so you can pass.
The Ugly
Fortunately, there is no ugly. And while this game suffers from some minor, though irritating flaws, it remains a vibrantly new experience in the computer gaming world. I've enjoyed every minute I have spent playing this game. And I wasted far too much time in front of my computer. As games go, it is one of the best I've seen in the past few years. Enjoyable to the last--even with the few petty annoyances. I highly recommend this game. And while I wouldn't consider it the greatest computer game ever made, it is the holy grail of the CRPG experience: a rare gem in an otherwise stagnant industry. Hopefully, developers will learn from Morrowind and seek to create innovative games emphasizing the gaming experience, giving players more control of the options, giving them a chance to live the world, as if it were their own.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
avepythagoras
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Location: Gainesville, FL
Reviews written: 38
Trusted by: 14 members
About Me:
Should be back soon, maybe...
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