I've even battled one of the greatest evils that has ever been burned onto a game disc.
...okay, so I really shouldn't be complaining.
Nevertheless, I know there are some out there who are bound to be reading and have been somewhat regularly. To those that do so - thank you very much, I highly appreciate it. This one is for all of you...and for me, as well. I thought long and hard about what game I would review for my one hundredth. After all, it's a big milestone and just any game wouldn't do. I couldn't just review something I plucked out of the bargain bin or a ROM that I'd been sent or anything of the like. No, I had to come up with something more. Really dig back into my history as a gamer and bring up something that I could use to push the envelop. Bring to the table that which I hadn't brought before, and bring you the MadCapMunchkin like you've never seen him before. Bigger, longer, and uncut...and yes, by this point you've figured out that I'm stalling for dramatic build up.
It's Morrowind!
...with the exception of Oblivion, but we've covered that.
For me, it was a love that started from this game. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I remember well, the year was 2003. I was in middle school - that awkward transition period between a boy and a slightly older boy with peach fuzz facial hair - and my stepfather brought it home, a three disc set that I still have to this day - Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition. I had played games like Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and others of the kind, but this was my first experience with an RPG. While it's a Western RPG, there are definitely some very not Western Europe Medieval Era influences in so many things in Morrowind.
The designs alone just blew my mind, and opened it right up so I could be exposed to so many things that were completely different from the "norm" I had been thus exposed to. Realms of fantasy could suddenly be so much more, and I allowed myself to become completely immersed in this strange and wondrous land. Words cannot describe what Morrowind is, one has to see it for themselves. By the end of this, however, I hope that I will have your appetite whetted enough to look into it.
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| Your cell mate. Oh, poor Jiub... |
The game begins like every other one of the main Elder Scrolls series does - with the main character in prison. In this case, it's a prison ship. We receive narration from Diana of Them-I mean, Azura, the Daedric Prince of Twilight, who tells you that you have been brought by ship to the island of Morrowind.
Instead of facing execution only to be saved by a dragon, or life imprisonment if you don't allow the Emperor to hit on you, your character is actually being pardoned and released. You go through a short tutorial to pick your name, race, birthsign, and class and then...you're free. Besides taking a package to Caius Cosades in Balmora (and there's nothing to make you do that), the main quest isn't remotely restrictive provided you don't kill anyone who's necessary to the plot.
This was before Bethesda had worked out making certain characters essential. Whenever the player manages to kill an NPC that is vital to the plot, a pop up message appears reading:
"With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed.
Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate,
or persist in the doomed world you have created."
Certain characters who aren't essential are marked as such, so not everyone who makes this message pop up is going to prevent the player from completing the Main Quest when they choose to do so. And even if you manage to kill an NPC...there is an alternate route to doing it, but it requires - in the end - far more work in grinding and frustration that in the end, you might as well have towed the line and done in the easy (if longer) way.
Which brings me to how leveling is done. Along with its immediate successor - Oblivion, Morrowind has the player select a certain amount of skills - in this case, Major and Minor that equal ten each, along with the remaining skills being put as "Miscellaneous" - and upon raising Major or Minor skill ten times, the player receives a level. However, this is where a large flaw in the game's design becomes apparent. When you level, the game tells you to "rest and meditate on what you've learned" as in Oblivion. Unlike the next game, however, Morrowind will actually take away your attribute points from level ups if you level up again.
So if you're going to power level, you better know where a usable bed is.
Which brings me to combat, a vital part of leveling up if you choose any weapon skills. Hit detection right out of the gate is somewhere where the game suffers. If you have a melee weapon, you have a better time with it but if you're going for ranged you're going to be in for a really bad time early on. Pro-tip for just about every class - buy up all the Sujamma you can find. It boosts your Strength attribute by fifty points when you drink it, which bumps up your hit ratio (which is based off of Strength), which makes things a lot easier if you can stomach the fifty point drop in Intelligence. Unless you're playing a mage, you won't have to worry to much.
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| Nope, no fast travel. Have fun walking (or using the console). |
Which, of course, brings me to the magic: It's awful. That's not a joke, I genuinely find magic in Morrowind to be a disturbingly frightening thing. Even if your skill is high, you stand a chance of spells outright failing. This makes being a spellcaster at low levels a joke unless you're just going from spells on scrolls or magic items and even then successful spellcasting is based on your appropriate attribute and Luck, so it could still fail at a critical moment. What's worse, the power of some items is also tied to your abilities. The UESP Wiki claims "Trying to cast a last minute Divine Intervention with a Mysticism skill of 5 will take a lot of luck". This statement is inaccurate.
Try absolutely impossible.
Needless to say, I did not try the magic overmuch. Others have done it and used exploits or just good old grinding to beat the odds with the success ratios, but I lacked the patience and/or desire to break the game. Another gripe I have that they thankfully fixed in later games was that, to do magic, the player must press a button and forgo the use of weapons by sticking their hands out before them as though they're about to do the first step in the Macarena. Then they can cast. Unlike later games, when the player can have a melee weapon equipped and still perform magic.
Now you may be wondering at this point what exactly I've been doing ragging on about a game that I love and have held up before as one of the greatest games I've ever played. So why have I been going on for so long about all the negative features? Why, to get them out of the way as I get to what I actually like about this game - namely...everything I didn't mention before.
The Main Quest alone is epic in scale. You've been sent to this island by Emperor Uriel Septim with a packet of orders for one Caius Cosades. If and when you take him up on the Main Quest, if you bother to pay attention, you can learn about the very rich and well-developed backstory of the island of Vvardenfell and that of Morrowind as a whole. You learn about the Chimer war hero known as Lord Nerevar, and the terrible trials he had to endure. How he was either - depending on who you ask - betrayed by his friend and advisor Dagoth Ur, or his friends and advisors Vivec, Sotha Sil, and Almalexia and killed.
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| Complete monster or misunderstood and betrayed? |
That's right. You're not just some shmuck on a prison boat. You're Dark Elf Jesus...
...maybe.
There's actually some debate as to whether or not the player character is the Nerevarine or not. But that's all philosophical mumbo jumbo and not really necessary to understand for the enjoyment of the game. The basic takeaway is that the player must defy the Tribunal, maneuver through the wilds to find the lost tribals in order to be recognized as the Nerevarine, and then make an assault on Dagoth Ur's base in the Red Mountain whilst gathering the tools necessary to defeat him and destroy the Heart of Lorkhan forever.
You get no fast travel (apart from the Silt Striders and the Mages' Guild transporters), you get no quest marker. If you don't know where you're going, you're just going to wander. And that's okay. In fact, some of the most fun you're going to have is in wandering about the countryside finding things as you head to your destination. You'll find all sorts of side quests all about the world and, to be honest, you'll want to. The Main Quest itself, while indeed being the Main Quest is just the tip of the iceberg. If you just do that, then you've barely touched ten percent of what the game offers in whole. Luckily, that's why there are more guilds and the Great Houses of Morrowind.
The Guilds operate very much as they do in Oblivion and Skyrim. You have a Fighters', and Mages', and a Thieves' which all are pretty much exactly what they say on the tin. However, the Fighters' and the Thieves' guilds are at odds with one another due to the former guild being puppets of the Cammona Tong crime syndicate, a pro-Morrowind group that hates Imperial interference in their homeland, which the Thieves' Guild is largely made up of. The Mages' Guild is heavily Imperial, which puts them into (sort of, but not really) direct opposition to House Telvanni, one of the three Great Houses of Morrowind that's heavily isolationist and...
Okay, there's a lot of different dynamics and politics involved in the game, but that's also what makes it interesting. There's a great deal more depth to things than there appears to be at first glance. Who you decide to side with will have an effect on people in both your chosen guild and opposing guilds and how they respond to you, which could make some quests easier or more difficult. There's also something important to note, while there is actually a work around to be able to be both the Fighters' and Thieves' guilds, there is no legitimate way to be in two different Great Houses at once.
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| [Actual Photograph of the Nerevarine...seems legit] |
And to be honest, I really like that. I also like that you do actually have to level up your skills in order to advance in your respective guilds. Something that both Oblivion and Skyrim abandon, likely due to complaints. We do play these games to divorce ourselves from reality for a time, but the fact is that the armor-clad warrior (no matter how cunning he may be) isn't going to become the head of the Thieves' Guild or the Dark Brotherhood by any stretch of the imagination. So it makes sense that you not only have a limited selection once you've chosen certain guilds, but also that you actually do have to be skilled enough to earn your place.
Compare to Oblivion, where I had one character that I managed to complete the Mages' Guild quest line at fourth level and with no difficulty uppage as you might expect. Really would call into question the competence of those who were, before that point, in charge of the place.
It also encourages multiple playthroughs. Well played, Bethesda. Well played.
And I could go on about the relationships between the Great Houses as well as those between the various Guilds, but that would be a whole other review in itself. The basic takeaway from it all is that there's so much more depth and complexity than in Oblivion or Skyrim because you can't have it all. You have to make choices and deal with the consequences of said choices. You are literally shaping the landscape of this country, for good or ill.
And yes, you are shaping the landscape by the end of the Main Quest because you have not only killed an insane god, but also have proof positive that Morrowind's main religion is nothing more than a hollow lie. I'm sure this will in no way cause the people of Morrowind to go into crisis and very likely lead to the complete and utter collapse of the one major religion in the region due to the fact that it's what a majority of the Dunmer people have been raised to believe and will in no way cause them all to spiral into misery and despair.
Nice job, moron.
Lastly to note, the game is largely text-based and is sadly the last game in the series to do so. The dialogue menu with most NPCs bring up dozens of different options depending on your location and quests, and it really enriches the world more than the few blurbs spat out by Oblivion or Skyrim's NPCs. It really says a lot when lines upon lines of text is more enriching and immersive to the player than six different voice actors who are speaking their hearts out giving the same eight or nine lines over and over and over again. Also, there's none that creepy fixed-eye contact from Oblivion. Gold star.
Summing up, I have spoken quite often about games that have shaped me into a gamer - my preferences and playstyles and the like - from my childhood. I first played this game in 2003, as I said before. I'd sit and I'd watch him play and I'd play myself and we're discuss quests and strategies and the like. Between the two of us (and admittedly, he got a lot more mileage out of it than I did at the time), we maybe only scratched a good fifteen, twenty percent of the game in total. There is so much to this game to be found and so much to still be enjoyed. Even now, I find new things about it that I never of knew before. It's a game that opened my eyes to a whole new world. It's a game
It's the game that made me want to be a gamer. And thirteen years later, it's still as good as when I first put it into the PC.
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is now available from Bethesda for Xbox and PC.
For the latest from the MadCapMunchkin, be sure to follow him on Twitter @MadCapMunchkin.
A special thanks go out to all my readers. You made this possible. Thank you!
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