Morrowind Review

Rendelius, 2002-05-15

This review is based on 100+ hours game time with the beta and the retail version. It isn't based on 100 hours into the main plot, however. I used the time I spent on this review to try different characters, different skills, different approaches to the game. While you can write a full review of a "normal" game after having completed it, you can't just do that with Morrowind due to its open ended gameplay. The developers claim there are 500+ hours worth of game time in Morrowind, and I haven't seen a thing that would contradict this claim. The second thing that complicates writing a review is the fact that there are so many ways to play Morrowind that you just can't cover them all. My experience with stealth classes, for example, is rather limited. Most of the time I played with characters that were either mages, warriors or a combination of both. After having said that, let's head right into the review.

Character generation
While most RPGs let you play three or five races and five to ten classses, Morrowind offers you a nearly unlimited number of starting characters. You choose from ten races, thirteen birth signs and 21 pre-made classes (seven each from the warrior, mage and stealth oriented skills) - or you custom design your class to your needs. From 27 skills you choose five as primary and five more as secondary skills, you can choose a specialization in combat, magic or stealth, and boost two of six character attributes for the beginning. The birth signs give you various advantages and disadvantages, like increased magic, increased personality or certain abilities (they can be used once a day like magic, but without mana usage - one of them would be a shield spell, for example, or the ability to open locks, others are permanent modifiers like more personality). And then you can choose different faces and hairstyles. This all sounds complicated, but gives you millions of different possibilities to customize your character for the role you like to play. This all would be useless if the characters would play roughly the same, but fortunately this isn't the case. Your choices have significant impact on gameplay - and this might be a little problem, since you just can't anticipate all that in advance. Most people playing Morrowind will start over a couple of times because their actual gameplay doesn't fit with the character they created, but if you stick to your role, even the first character will be fine.

Character advancement
Morrowind features a skill based character advancement scheme. You don't get experience points by doing quests or killing monsters, you skills rise by using them. Once a combination of your major and minor skills has risen ten times, you will level up and get some points to distribute to your attributes like strength, intelligence, endurance and so on. You get three points per level, but depending on how often you used your skills related to the proper attributes, you will get multipliers on them. If you, for example, have used a lot of spells that rely on willpower, and these skills contribute a lot to the ten skill raises you had, a point spent on willpower might actually be worth 2 to 5 points.

The leveling system is hell for power gamers. If you are determined to make an uberhero as fast as possible, you will run into difficulties doing the right things for the right multipliers (the whole game is hell for power gamers, but more on that later). If you like to roleplay, the system is adequate and rewarding. What you do most, will be awarded most - and in my opinion, this is the way it should be. You can speed up leveling by working on skills like crazy (for example custom make a cheap restoration spell that costs you only one mana point per use) and practicing it over and over - and if this is the way you want to play the game, that's fine, but I tried to use my skills only when they were appropriate in the game, and that worked out fine for me as well.

Skills can be trained by actions and by trainers. You'll find trainers for every skill in the game, and for a certain (raising) amount of money, you can let them train you. This system, however, is capped at skill levels about app. 50, since you won't find trainers good enough to train you. From then on, you are on your own.

Each and every skill can be raised up to 100, and with magic modifiers even above that. Is it possible to train ALL skills to 100? Yes and some will even go for that. It will take a long time, though, but it's certainly a goal worth going for.

One of the questions is: when will the game start to become boring - at which character level are you able to win all fights easily? Once again, this depends on the gamestyle you apply. If you want to hack your way through the dungeons, there isn't much resistance at level 40 anymore, and if you power level, this will be possible in less than 100 hours, much less. However, if you roleplay, this won't be much of a problem. Morrowind is easy to exploit, be it by power leveling tricks or with the editor - it's all about freedom and it's all up to you.

Game world
After you have played for an hour or so, your thoughts will be "oh my god, this is huge". After 50+ hours, they will be "oh my god, this is even more huge than I thought". And it's not the sheer size of the game alone. Morrowind is jammed with uniqueness, since every inch of the game world is thoroughly crafted by hand. No more repetitive towns like in Daggerfall, no more empty landscape. Surprises and great views will be your companions in every hour you spend in the game. There are nine distinct regions, with their own flair and atmosphere. Each of these areas would be big enough to contain other games as a whole - just to give you an impression about the sheer size of Morrowind.

The island of Vvardenfell is inhabited by ten races, and home to various guilds and factions. Depending on your character, you can join the ones most fitting your style - be it a helpful laymen member of the imperial cult, a warrior or an assassin. The main plot involves joining one of these factions. But if you don't want to follow the main storyline, just stop doing quests for them.

The amount of detail in the game is breathtaking. The background story is well laid out in tales and books, and you gain a lot of insight and feel the dense atmosphere if you take your time to understand what is going on in Vvardenfell and the empire. This is one of the densest RPG universes seen so far, and for me it was a lot of fun to hear Morrowind lore. If you see books, read them, some of them will even increase your stats - and almost all are entertaining and well written.

The game world is very interactive in the sense that you can pick plants, store items everywhere, find animals and monsters galore. It doesn't have a physics system, so throwing or breaking items isn't possible, but in my opinion, that's something you will hardly ever miss.

You will meet more than 3000 NPC's during your journey, visit 30+ towns, numerous dungeons (about 300) and find a lot of weapons, armor and magic items. Once again, this is a HUGE game, and with the addition of the TES construction set, it can really be endless. Since the engine is so advanced, it will have longevity - I expect a community to stay around this game for several years.

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