LGR - Elder Scrolls: Morrowind

This game was the first I played till sunrise. I rented it from a video store for the OG Xbox after hearing about it on Toonami. Once I wrapped my head around it I couldn’t put it down. I played all Friday night from maybe 8pm till 7am straight. When I realized the sun was up I was too tried to go to my bedroom and just clunked out in the game room to some Spider-Man cartoons.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is fifteen years old. Although for me, I didn’t actually play the game until a couple years after it launched, and it was with this Game of the Year Edition that I first experienced the land of dark elves and silt striders. And it’s a nice enough box I suppose, but I much prefer the massive collector’s edition, clad in matte black and embossed glossy artwork. 

Definitely a centerpiece of any PC game collection, but good luck finding a complete copy of this for less than $200,   along with the standard manual and fold-out map poster, but there’s also the phenomenal soundtrack by Jeremy Soule on CD.

In addition you get the 48-page Art of Morrowind book, which is a real treat if you want to And finally there’s the two-and-a-half inch pewter Ordinator figurine. But yeah, the typical small box North American release is pretty tame in comparison, but  both of which I admired and analyzed endlessly back when I first played this.

However, if you were in one of the European territories where Ubisoft distributed the game, you might’ve had this fantastic bundle. Revealing more artwork, as well as the manual, map, and CDs tucked inside in a way that’s much more visually appealing than the ugly cardboard tray we got over here. And of course, there were the two official expansion packs, Tribunal and Blood moon, which I have thanks to a generous donation.

Thank you very much for that!

This content was included in the Game of the Year Edition, but they’re sweet little boxes And finally, there’s the Xbox version, the only other platform Morrowind appeared on outside the PC. Despite its drawbacks due to hardware limitations, it was received rather well and ended up being the fifteenth highest-selling game on the system. And finally, there’s the Morrowind Prophecies, this one being the game of the year edition which is a gigantic 416-page strategy guide by the venerable Peter Olaf son. Not a requirement in the days of online walkthroughs, but holy crap, the detail this thing goes into is  darned impressive.

Morrowind deserved it, too; this was a game with nearly a decade-long legacy in 2002, with Bethesda teasing it as far back as 1997 with this note inside the box for Battle spire. Yeah, a Morrowind in 1998 would’ve been quite a different beast indeed, but instead also used in games like Freedom Force and Prince of Persia 3D. Whew, all right, are you still with me?

Good, because you’re about to have an orgasm courtesy of Jeremy Soule!  Once you do get past this menu and start a new game, you’re presented with a quote and a creepy yet soothing voice whispering sweet ambiguities in your ear...

Disembodied voice: Fear not, for I am watchful. You have been chosen. Voice of Jiub: Wake up! Were here. Why are you shaking? Are you okay? Wake up!

Yeah, this is actually quite a departure from the preceding Elder Scrolls games in terms of introductions. No hair metal, no cheesy FMV, no complicated stats screens. Morrowind starts you off as a blank slate to determine your identity through the narrative, while also acting as a quick tutorial. The setup is that you’re an anonymous prisoner who’s just landed on the isle of Vvardenfell within the Tam riel territory of Morrowind. You’re about to be released, but first you have to fill out the required paperwork, which sets you up to perform all the classic CRPG character creation stuff. Choose your sex, your appearance, and your race, some of which will have long-standing.

You’ll also choose a class or create your own, always a lovely opportunity to completely screw up your game before it even starts if you don’t know what you’re doing! After this you’re given a set of final obligations to fulfill as an ex-con, which involves delivering a package to a man in the town of Balmora. And yeah, that is all you have to go on. You are on your own. And wow, it does not seem like a decade and a half has passed! Morrowind may not have the grandest opening act or the prettiest opening scenery, but there’s still something special about stepping through that door for the first time and walking out into the village of Seyda Neen.

It’s just you, some basic inventory, and a journal against the entire rest of world. You have a map, but other than a few vague markings and territorial outlines its empty. Furthermore, there are no quest markers or arrows pointing you in a certain direction, it’s completely up to you as to what to do next and how to get there. Heck, you don’t *have* to go anywhere, since every single village, fortress, town, and It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when a CRPG throws you into the deep end from the beginning like this, but Well, for the most part. 

I like to think I’m not completely blinded by nostalgia when it comes to Morrowind even if it remains one of my favorite games. With plenty more if you continue onto the countless hours of side quests and expansion pack territories. Some of these issues I don’t find as bad as their reputation suggests, namely the combat. As with prior games in the series, the combat in Morrowind is based on percentages and stats; so just because you see a visual representation of you swinging a sword into some dudes face, it doesn’t mean you’ll actually hit them unless the invisible dice rolls in your favor. 

It also evolves the mouse cursor swiping of Arena and Dagger fall and meshes it with typical first-person game controls. So when combining your attack with movements and held-down keys, you’ll get different animations and attacks. The options menu lets you override this and always use the best attack, which I typically.

Naturally, players have debated the merits of this for years, but either way I find that this is mostly a problem in the early hours of the game where you’re still the fighting becomes a whole lot more enjoyable. Not exactly what I’d call excellent or anything, but a bit more satisfying at least. And since the vast majority of Borrowing’s gameplay takes place after you’ve gotten good, I genuinely don’t find the combat to be this ultimate deal-breaker. Unless we’re talking about freaking cliff racers, because screw these guys. picking from a list of upgrades when you level up.

Instead, while leveling you increase your primary attributes and these in turn determine the maximum level of their associated skills, but the skills themselves are upgraded by simply playing the game. Which will increase your athletics and acrobatics skills pretty quickly. 

And with as slow of a runner and weak of a jumper you are at the start, you absolutely will want to take advantage of this just to make getting around in the game that much less of a slog. There are also trainer NPCs dotted throughout the world, which is fine and dandy, but not only is it an annoying string of menu options to go through each time, but the only thing standing in your way of epic skills is money.

And thankfully, getting rich is a ton of fun and is the entire point of the game, at least as far as how play. New character I generate, I always end up becoming a sneaky, murderous kleptomaniac. It’s just, dude, there’s so much shiny stuff just lying around, who can resist! then a bit of flattery and bribery is par for the course when fencing your stolen loot. 

This stuff is seriously like, 90% of why I still go back to Morrowind, because the gameplay loop of sneaking, stealing, and bartering is just hugely entertaining. About the only thing bringing it down is the experience of bashing your head against the Not only is there a lack of really detailed sorting abilities, which was improved through the Tribunal expansion to allow filtering by active quests. But even then it’s still only what I’d call a tolerable experience.

These chronologically-sorted pages make it a bit  easy to get flustered trying to find an obscure. To be clear, I’m referring to the interactive dialogue, not the short barks and phrases NPCs speak when you move close by. KHAJIIT HAS NO WORDS FOR YOU. which makes sense seeing as this game is orders of magnitude larger. But when combined with the awful text windows you have to navigate, conversations end up. There’s tens of thousands of lines in-game, and I swear, it seems like a single NPC can contain half of them at once!

In theory, I have no problem with copious dialogue, but when it’s a chore to deal with I just tune out. And that’s unfortunate because there is a slew of captivating lore in Morrowind, but where you have similar amounts of dialogue, yet because of the way it’s divided up and presented it’s friendlier to interact with and feels much more conversational. 

But enough complaining for now; once you come to terms with Borrowing’s strangeness, its sheer awesomeness shines through and it is something special indeed. Whether you’re going through the main storyline or creating your own destiny being sidetracked by wayward women, it seems like there’s always something new and enjoyable to experiment with. Got trouble dealing with pent-up rage?

Join the Fighter’s Guild! 

Have a penchant for magic and trapping souls? 

Join the Mages Guild!

Can’t keep your hands off of anything, ever?

Join the Thieves Guild, if you can find them!

Tired of having BDSM dudes beating you up while you’re trying to sleep?

Track down the Dark Brotherhood and be sure to bring your own whip. And who can forget the various Great Houses, religions, and cults that you can join and take advantage of. 

That’s not to say that the main story is boring or anything, far from it, was droning on about in the beginning of the game, the journey you’ll take to fulfill your destiny is quite the fantastical thing indeed and fly away using levitation, it’s just absurd the amount of stuff you can do and the combinations of cool and while clearly some aspects of Morrowind streamlining, it can be argued that they went too far in some ways later on, and that Morrowind is the last of its kind.

And if you want to play it today and have a PC that isn’t made of turds, it’s incredibly straightforward and easy to do so. Unlike several of the older Elder Scrolls, Morrowind has never really been far from reach, and is still playable on modern operating systems. And its currently for sale on digital distribution platforms like GOG and Steam. 

There was also the Elder Scrolls Anthology released in 2013 that contained a physical so it’s a decent little jump-start to your collection if you don’t want the individual boxes. This is a comprehensive bunch of editing tools, and is the same SDK Bethesda used to create the game itself so it allows you to do pretty much anything you can think of.

There are fan-made mods, patches, and tweaks to address practically every shortcoming I mentioned throughout this review, so if you look in the right places and spend a certain amount of time you can basically forget everything negative I said and make Morrowind the most perfect game in the history of time. All right, maybe that’s a bit much, but my point is that this game’s player-guided agenda just doesn’t stop, and continues well beyond what comes in the package.

Quite simply, if you haven’t played Morrowind yet, I implore you to give it a shot. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of things to see and do and experience, to the degree that there’s a good chance that your favorite thing in the game might be something I didn’t even mention! us to still be talking about it in another fifteen years.

It is by no means perfect, but it’s still what I would call a masterpiece in its own admittedly flawed way. *Morrowind exploration music plays* And yes, in case you’re wondering I am quite curious about the Morrowind expansion for the Elder Scrolls Online. I don’t know if there’s gonna be a video, but there are other Elder Scrolls videos already and more to come in the future. So stay tuned!

And thank you for watching!

Radio Shack's $399 Micro from 1980!