The Neverending Story

Welcome to the world of Morrowind, home of a huge population that you’ll probably never get to meet. This game is epic, but on the same token, too epic. I call this the Neverending Story.

The story begins with you being released from slavery. As you enter the realm of Morrowind, you are registered and released into the general public. Little do you know that there are dark forces at work in the world.

This is the obvious part of the story. The truth is that the story to Morrowind is so grand that you may never fully catch it all. As you pick up scrolls and read obscure books in the game world, you learn that there were sects trying to create new spells and new gods. One such count tells of Dagoth Ur managing to become a higher being. To be honest, I have no clue what the actual story is behind the game. It’s just that vague.

The appeal to Morrowind is the fact that you can do whatever you want. Much like Grand Theft Auto, you have the freedom to run around, beat people into the ground, and rob them. Or, you can be a hero and listen to them, then take on any quests they might have for you. Some quests help develop the story to the game. Personally, I’ve played this game for quite a while, and I haven’t figured out where those quests are, since every person I speak with has some side quest that doesn’t really tie into the main plot. The majority of the game I’ve spent exploring. The world is so huge with so much to do that you can actually get lost for (real life) days without knowing which way is up.

The first time I played, I hated the game, so it took me a month to actually get around to playing it again. Morrowind is a game of patience because it moves so slow. If you decide to walk from one town to another, it can take you hours of play time. As such, the smart thing to do is just sell any stuff you can to buy a ticket on a huge bug-like creature. This gets you there much faster and you can get down to business sooner.

Character development is very different than most RPG’s that I’ve played. In Morrowind, you don’t level like other games, but instead you gain proficiency in skills by using them. By repeatedly casting fire, I gained experience in this spell and it grew stronger. Other skills that share the same tree will also grow. Because fire is considered a destruction skill, my spark and other attacks spells also grew. The problem is that repeated casting of skills requires mana. Mana is limited and doesn’t recover on its own. As such, you might find it better to sleep somewhere. Unfortunate for you, there are laws against hobos sleeping on the streets in cities. As such, you need to leave town and pull up a nice square of dirt to make your bed. Just be sure you’re ready to fend off any creatures that might attack you in your sleep. If you want to sink the money into it, you can also pay the Inn Keeper for a bed. Since money doesn’t always come easy, you’d better have a good plan for making enough to support your expensive need for comfort.

This game is truly an RPG. When you create your character, you are given a choice between several species. Each species has its own attribute bonuses as well as skills that you are granted from the start. Once you have your race selected, you then choose gender and facial appearance. From here, you move on. The game introduces character creation by first having someone ask your name, and then you go through a registration process to become a citizen of Morrowind. Once you reach the scribe in the registration office, there are 3 ways you can have your class selected. You can answer a survey about what you would do in situations, choose a preselected class, or assemble your own class based on what strengths and weaknesses you want applied. Surprisingly, the survey is very good at choosing a class that will best suit your mode of play. If you choose your own class, you may or maynot find what you’re looking for in skill sets. Finally, creating your own class based on what you think is a good combination of skills may seem like a good idea, but you wind up spending hours in character creation. This part isn’t nearly as fun. Once you have your class, you then choose your birth sign to gain additional skills. This starts the world in motion.

As you go forward, your actions further develop your character. If you are kind and help people all over, your fame will go up and you become better known as a hero. You may also join factions to gain fame. Personally, I wanted to see how the game stacks up to the living-game-world model. I slaughtered an entire town. I became the infamous murderer and the rest of the world reflected this behavior. As such, people in towns close to where I slaughtered react negatively toward me. Some fear me, while guards either watch me closely or try to arrest me. Beyond this, the possibilities are endless.

The visuals on Morrowind are very unbalanced. At first, you have this beautiful world. They have a pseudo water animation simulating lakes, rivers, or ponds. The sunlight shines on the camera and his a nice radiant effect (considering the time it was made). Textures are fairly realistic and well rendered. Then you get to the people in the world. People and creatures are all blocky. They don’t look nearly as smooth as the environments, so it’s very easy to pick out enemies at a distance. There are no facial expressions, so you can’t tell if someone is displeased or just naturally has a stick up their rear. Ultimately, the characters force you to read more than you may want to.

The game does run fairly smoothly, but has some glitches. During the first town, I found that if I attack a villager then try to use water walking to escape; there is a glitch that crashes the game. Other parts include unseen barriers where the world must load a new area. When you hit these, there is no warning, but the game pauses, and then makes you wait. It sometimes acts like it’s about to crash. In addition to this, the game gets buggy in some areas. The world is so vast and interactive that it seems the programmers couldn’t have had a large enough Q/A team to fix it all. As such, you’ll sometimes run into glitches while picking up items or using certain things. Although these are rare, it just shows that they tried to put a little too much into Morrowind.

One of the main problems I have with this game is the reading. Now, I’m all for old school gaming where you can read all the dialog and text, but in Morrowind, a question as simple as where is the next town receives a longer answer than necessary. An example would be something like the below:

Me: Where is the next town
NPC: The next town, eh? Well, I was born in the next town. It was so small, it was a one horse town. Come to think of it, we were so poor we had to eat horse meat, but this was only because the pigs were diseased at the time. Which reminds me of breakfast, which was bacon and eggs. I had them at the quaintest café up the road. It was roughly three blocks west of here and past the smith. I enjoy eating there.
Me: So, the next town is where?

It may not sound exactly like that in the game, but basically, if you ask an NPC a simple question, you’ll have to sit through their life story before getting a straight answer. In addition to this, none of the NPC’s that I’ve met are voiced with more than a couple key phrases. The mundane nature of reading their recollection of every waking moment may seriously put off some players.

I call this game the Neverending Story because after countless hours of play, you may never find the actual story. To add to the mix, they have a construction set that allows you to add to the already vast world of Morrowind. I doubt most people will ever finish Morrowind, but if you enjoy a game that truly allows you to role-play, Morrowind is it. I can’t recommend this game, but I can’t say it’s a bad game either. What I can say is that Morrowind is a GOOD GAME. If you’re looking for an RPG that will offer countless hours of play, then Morrowind is it. If you’re looking for a short and sweet story, then you may not enjoy this game as much.

PLEASE NOTE: This game was tested using the following setup. Deviations from this may alter your experience.

System 1:
Build: Custom Built PC
Operating System: WinXP Home
Processor: 2.2 Ghz
System Memory: 1GB
Video Card: GeForce 6600 (256MB)