Hold on, let me admire you until you give me a discount on that sword...

Elderscrolls III: Morrowind was a game that won me over with it's next generation graphics (at the time) and it's live another life appeal. The gameplay opportunities were endless as the game contained more than over 5000 quests along side the main story. The province of Morrowind is gigantic for a game world will take days to walk across. Dungeons, Cities, and Bandits are rittled over the land and it is up to you on how you interact with them.

Next Generation Graphics
I was in deep awe to see the water rendered so realistically as it was in Morrowind; no other game has done such a thing at the time. The water rippled and reflected the landscape; it even moves around as you walk into it. The landscape is the main graphical selling point of the game. The province that the game is based in is gigantic. There are cliffs, mountains, paths, forests and lakes for you to gaze at. Even with Oblivion released, it's still amazing to believe that Morrowind had such ambitious graphics at the time it was released.

The only problem with the graphics is the downright nasty and ugly looking character models. They look segmented and lack natural movement. Faces are bland with the exception of a few. The textures within the game can be ugly. Also going along with the textures, there is a limited palate of colors when you travel across the province. Since Morrowind is a ashlander type location, you will see a lot of browns and yellow hues. Walking around the mountainous areas will result into the ground becoming black due to the molten lava nearby. There are a few green field areas around the province but the sights of those are few and far between.

Indoor areas are also pretty good. Different ceiling heights, wall textures, and room shapes reflect the many different races and cultures of Morrowind. The different architectures of buildings provide a deep sense of immersion with multicultural world of Morrowind. Another cool point with the Morrowind graphics is that almost any item you (such as books, candles, and weapons) can be picked up or dropped. However, don't expect the same object manipulation along the lines of Oblivion.

Last Generation Sound
The game has surround sound capabilities but the sounds that the game has to offer is bland and forgetful. Many sound effects are used over and over again as you hit enemies and it does kind of get annoying. The ambient sounds of the landscape is good but do not reflect what you are seeing. Too bad the game did not feature any EAX-type sound engine to bring the game's sound up to par with the graphics. Sounds that are made outside still sound the same as sounds made in inside areas.

For a game with so many NPCs (more than a thousand), the game could have been improved so much with more variance to the voice effects. As you walk by NPCs, they will automatically say something that depends on their disposition towards you. Expect to hear the same phrase continuously as you progress further into the game.

Choose who you want to be
The process of character creation can take a long time especially when there is 10 races to choose from. They are the Nords, Dark Elves, High Elves, Wood Elves, Imperials, Khajiits (cat people), Argonians (lizard people), Bretons, Orc, and Redguard. Each races offers their own special ability and attributes. For example, Khajiit being soft on their feet will be excellent stealth fighters. Whereas Bretons with they natural disposition towards magic will be awesome mages.

Along with the 10 races, there are also numerous classes for you to choose from ranging from war mage to paladin. The classes priotizes which skills are important and which are minor (War Mage will major in magic skills whereas Paladins will Major in Health and Swords skills). There are numerous ways to choose a class. You can take a question based test to determine what type of character you are and be assigned a class. You can choose from a list of predetermined classes. Or you can create your own class by picking which skills are important and what not.

A Realistic RPG
Forget that the game is based in a realm of Elves and fantasy creatures, the role-playing approach that Morrowind takes is a very realistic one. The character creation in Morrowind is entirely different from the likes of those in Final Fantasy. You only manipulate your character's appearance with limited options and you pick which race and class it should be. By picking a class, you will have some major skills that are already progressed while other skills are undeveloped. In order to manipulate and increase those skills, you must use them successfully within the game world. If I want to be a better Swordsman, I should use the sword more. With every successful hit, the skill progresses and increases. The same concept is applied to if you want to be a better locksmith.

The success of a skill is mainly determined by how high your skill number is. A level 50 Swords skill will almost always hit compared to a level 20 Swords skill. At a puny level 5, you shouldn't even bother trying. To develop the small skill at a fast pace, you can go to trainer NPCs that live in different cities in Morrowind and pay a price to train those skills.

Attributes
The main basic attributes are the basic foundations of your skills. There is strength, speed, agility, intelligence, willpower, endurance, personality and luck. These are preset by your race. The only way you can manipulate these skills is to level up the skills associated with them. Increasing your dagger skill which branches from the agility attribute will cater your character toward being more agile. After you've leveled up several times, the game will notify you that it is time to rest and meditate on what you have learned. It's a fancy way of saying, "You LEVELED UP!" After you rest, a window will display all your attributes and you select which one to increase. All selections towards the attributes will be increased by one unless there's a modifier by it. A modifier is where you ha leveled up a specific branched skill like agility more than the other skills and a modifier will be placed on the agility attribute. So instead of increasing it by one, you can increase it by 2 or 5 depending on the magnitude of how much of the agility based skills you used.

An Epic Journey
The story starts off with your character being released from prison by the Emperor's order as you are the chosen one. Sounds cliche, does it not? Well turns out your character has a knack for getting some pretty disturbing nightmares about some crazy stuff and you must progress further to answer to dreams and see who the heck Dagoth Ur is.

I, myself, no matter how much I have played Morrowind have never beaten the game. There were too many side quests where I would get side tracked and tried to complete. Walking across the land will result in you meeting some pretty interesting people who will want assistance or your hide.

Interacting with the locals
Talking with the locals is basically you coming up to a person and pressing "space bar" to activate them. A window will appear and a sort of conversation mini-game begins. There will be your basic greeting on the left side of the window and your choices of questions are on the right side. Simple stuff. To ask a question you just click on the topic and an answer will be displayed. However, things are little more indepth than that. Each NPC will have certain disposition toward you which is factored in by your race, popularity, or your notoriety. The lower the disposition the more reluctant the NPC will divulge information for you. Here's where the quasi mini-game begins. On the top of the screen is where you have multiple options to manipulate the character. There is the basic Bribe, where you pick which amount you want to give away. High bribes will almost always win over a character whereas low bribes are a gamble. There is the favorite Admire where you kiss butt to make the character's disposition higher. The Admire skill is strictly determined by your Speechcraft skill. Last, is the Intimidate skill where you flex your muscles and hopefully, temporarily raise the character's disposition. Intimidating is also based on your speechcraft skill.

Bland Fighting
The fighting is pretty cool at first but the novelty wears off later on. You will begin to notice that the fighting is basically determined by your skill and an invisible dice being rolled in the background. No matter how good your aim is with your sword or bow, it's strictly based on your skills. Blocking with your shield is also percentage based and automatic. The fighting in Morrowind sums up to you clicking your mouse and swingining your sword like a mad man until you hit the enemy. No skill is involved.

The magic usage on the otherhand is a lot more exciting. There are numerous schools of magic from which you can learn from. There is the illusion school where you can blind or distract NPCs. Destruction school where you can learn skills that will destroy stuff. Restoration school will mainly be based upon healing and protection. There are many more schools of skills.

Non-existant A.I.
Despite the fact that the world is supposed to be inhabited by many living breathing individuals, the truth is that many of the NPCs walk around with no apparent task in mind. It's as though they're all waiting for you to approach them, so you can progress on with your quests. Their fighting isn't better either. They will simply spot you when you walk within a certain distance and run towards you. If they got spells or arrows they will stay back and fire. They will not switch between magic and fighting unless they run out of Magicka (Magic energy) to use the magic. They will not flee and will fight to their deaths if it may be. Another reason why fighting is so very bland.

More Quests from Guilds
The main quests you will mostly find yourself completing will be from the many guilds in Morrowind. There is the fighter's guild, mage's guild, theive's guild, assasin's guild and many more. Some will let you apply right away whereas other like the Camona Tong, the assassin's guild, will be more secretive in it's application process. All of the quests are oriented with the type of guild you're in of course. You have the opportunity to rise up the ranks of each guild and even become leader of one. As your rank goes up, you receive armor or weapons as rewards.

Along with the Guilds, there are the three houses of Morrowind which are like the guilds but are run strictly by the Dark Elves. They are the Hllalu, Redoran and Telvani. Stealth, Combat, and Magic oriented houses in that respective order.

The Outfitting of your Character
The outfitting of your character is more varied than I had encountered before. You get helms, chest plates, shoulder pauldrons, wrist guards, leggings, boots, boots, shirts, and many more. All the stuff you wear is represented graphically on your character with the exception of rings and necklaces.

The armor system is very diverse. There are light armor, medium armor, and heavy armor. The more you wear a specfic armor and get hit while wearing it, the more your armor skill of that particular type increases. You are not restricted to one armor type, so you can wear any armor you want as long as you have enough skill to make wearing that armor useful.

A minor note, Khajiit and Argonian characters will not be able to wear boots or shoes of any kind due to their paw like feet.

The Grand Theft Approach
There is no one set way on how to complete quest. Since there a limitless amount of options for character types, anyone can complete quests in whatever fashion they see fit. Stealth characters can do their own thing by sneaking and using their marksmen skill whereas Combat characters will run in with axe in hand. An example of this is where a Thieve's guild quest giver will tell you to retreive a diamond from an alchemist across town. As a stealth character, I can sneak up stairs and lock pick the chest to retreive the diamonds. Combat characters have a choice of killing the alchemist and getting a key from her.

Along the lines of being free roam game like Grand Theft Auto III, there are laws in place within a game. Stealing, assaulting, and murdering at not taken so lightly in the game. Simply stealing an item within a building will have the entire crowd run after you with spells firing. Murdering someone will be between you and the opponent if there are no guards around. If someone sees you kill a person then you will have a bounty placed upon your head. Higher your bounty the higher your notoreity is throughout the land of Morrowind. However, if you do get caught by a guard, you have a choice of going to Jail and losing most of your skill points, paying the fine which will be your bounty and giving up any stolen items, or simply resisting arrest.

A helping hand from the community
Morrowind comes with creation kit catered towards player to create their own offerings for the game. So far, there hundreds of player mods and additions to the game that it's hard to determine which are good or not. Many of the mods are designed to fix problems that the patches did not fix. These problems are mainly gameplay based. For example, I've said that the game lacked Enemy A.I., well, there is a mod which helps alleviate the problem by making the enemy flee when his or her health is too low. Other mods help bring more life to the most of the time ghost-town esque landscape of Morrowind by adding animals and other fairy tale creatures. Some mods even go the distance towards making all the NPCs in a game follow their own set schedule reminiscint of the Radiant A.I. of Oblivion. The opportunities and benefits of the player mods are boundless.

The only problem with the having so many player mods installed is that it will start to bog down the game. Being resource intensive as it already is, having too many mods will create stuttering with graphics. There are also some other 3rd party fixes where you press a fix-it button and all the mods are cleaned but I don't find that quite reliable to say the least. To be honest, I have made a list of quality, must-have, mods and vowed not to install any other mods.

Hardcore Game crowd would be happy
A game like Morrowind is not catered toward the mainstream audience. This game wil require patience and time to reap the full benefits of the game. Character development and quest fulfillment is hundred times more lengthy than the offerings in games like Diablo II. Due to the sheer length and the required tenacity to complete the game, many casual gamers will be turned off by this complex and endless game.

However, if you give it time to set in and you have the patience to immerse yourself into the world of Morrowind, then by all means, get this game. You will find yourself enjoying living another life in a vast virtual world.