Morrowind

Title: Morrowind - GOTY
Platform Played On: Xbox
Release Date: May 1, 2002
Date Played: January - June 2008
Time Played: 300 hours
Completed (Y/N): Yes
Score: 5/5




Opinion:
I was deep into exploring the world of Norrath in my EverQuest 1 adventures when Morrowind came out.  I installed it, ran around a bit, and thought to myself.  This is just like single player EQ, why would I play this if I can play in a world with real people? And so Morrowind was put away for many years.

Starting Town

In college my friend Jeff told me about his epic adventures in Morrowind, collecting armor/weapons and most importantly candles, and arranging them in his house within the game. All of these stories were super intriguing, but I was still jumping from MMO to MMO, and it was during my time in Unholy Legion (WOW guild) that Xbox 360 came out and with it Oblivion.  I remember huge anticipation for Oblivion among my guild mates, but once again it came and went without me playing it.

It was not until early 2008 that I decided to mod an old Xbox (that was passed down to me from Jeff (whose Morrowind adventures I mentioned earlier). And after successfully modifying it I loaded his Morrowind save that was still there from 2003. I saw his decked out character, and his candle arrangements. It really made me want to play Morrowind.  By this time I came to realize the beauty of Morrowind and Oblivion (Arena, and Daggerfall too of course). The beauty is that unlike MMOs you can permanently change the world. Take Jeff's house for instance. He killed whoever lived there and took their house as his own. The fact that you could do that was incredible! Normally you can either not kill NPCs or they would respawn. Not here, once killed they are gone forever. Needless to say, I decided to give Morrowind a shot and experience it firsthand.

Menu System (Click to Zoom)

Now being 2008 with games like Oblivion out, there are a ton of mods available to make Morrowind a more enjoyable experience (to put it lightly).  Basically mods that make it look like (if not better than) Oblivion, with lush high resolution textures, far draw distances and reskinned NPCs.  However I wanted a true experience, I wanted to play it the way it was meant to be played. The way everyone that told me epic stories played through the game. And so I fired up Xbox (the original one), which sounds like a vacuum cleaner, grabbed the controller with the weird Black and White buttons, and embarked on my journey.

Morrowind was an incredible experience. It felt like no other RPG out there.  I was dropped into a world, received vague directions to my destination and beyond that I could do whatever I wanted. I could go any direction, kill anyone, and all of my decisions and actions had permanent consequences. 

After solving a few mystery quests in the starting town I headed off to explore the world. Right off the bat I decided that I was going to be an archer, and so I picked up a bow and some arrows and went looking for something to kill.  I knew that skills went up the more you used them, but I was not prepared for the harsh reality of shooting a rat point blank 10-20 times with my bow before I would even hit it. Whenever I traveled I jumped to level my athleticism, when I fought I took my time and shot it over and over again until I killed it to level up my marksman skill. By the end of the game I was able to 1 shot almost anything from a mile away with my bow and run/jump over small hills due to my athletic skill. 300 hours in and having grasped the mechanics I had a crazy powerful character with boots of levitation and gloves of teleportation. Robes of weightlessness and weapons of lightning. It was a blast!

Without Any Mods (top) vs Graphical Overhaul Mod (bottom)
Click to Zoom

To jump back to the beginning for a minute, one of my first interesting encounters happened when I was strolling down the road, and exploring the wilderness. All of a sudden out of nowhere a robed man comes crashing from the sky and dies from the fall right in front of my eyes.  What the hell? Says I, as I took a look around wondering if anyone else saw what I just witnessed. I went to see if the man was alright.. and unfortunately he was not. He did however have a book that fell out of his hands as he hit the ground. Upon further inspection I came to realize that it was his journal, and that furthermore he was researching potions of levitation. All of a sudden it became clear, that this unfortunate wizard became the victim of his own creations. I grabbed the 3 potions he had left on him and went on.  Its moments like this that made Morrowind magical. I imagine many people have never even encountered him. But I did, because I chose this specific path to walk down, and there are thousands of ways you can go.  Morrowind allows you to forge your own adventure.  You do not have to do any quest in any particular order. It encourages you to go out there explore and absorb the world.

Morrowind did not have fast travel (unlike most modern RPGs, including Oblivion and Skyrim), instead it had sort of a bus system. You could travel between half a dozen locations around the world for a small fee.  And to be honest I prefer that system. I opt to not fast travel, as there are so many random interesting things to find while journeying from point A to point B in the world of Morrowind (and Oblivion/Skyrim), that it would be a shame to fast travel and miss them. Needless to say, I trekked up and down Morrowind exploring every single inch of the map. This included the two expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon. Tribunal was alright, but Bloodmoon added a whole icy island to the northeast of Morrowind, which had a very interesting and you could even say epic questline involving werewolves.

Logbook Would go to 500+ Pages (Click to Zoom)

One major issue that I encountered with Morrowind on the Xbox in particular is lack of Quest journal.  You have one big log book (that by the end of the game got to be 500+ pages), in which all events are stored.  In order to even realize that you have a quest you either have to write it down in real life on a piece of paper or do them one at a time avoiding everything else (which is basically impossible). So what I did was note page numbers and then cross them out. If I got a quest to recover stolen treasure, and it is on page 414 in my Log book, then I would write down 414-Treasure Quest then I would be able to look it up on that page if I needed more details.  It is a troublesome system, in which if you forget to note down the quest you can easily lose it forever among hundreds of pages of text.  On the PC version however you have a full on quest log, which stores quests 1 by 1 in a nice and organized fashion.  PC also has the mods (as I mentioned before, to make it more user friends and look like a 2011 game). Other than those things and draw distance it is an identical game, and I enjoyed the experience I had with it on the Xbox.

Morrowind is a great game. It is a little bit on the hardcore RPG side, and may be hard for a non gamer to get into. But once you break that initial barrier and grasp the basics of the mechanics it becomes an epic journey. Unless you are like me and want to play the true 2002 experience I would recommend playing it on PC, and grabbing some of the graphical overhaul mods to make it look like a modern game. This is a must play for any serious RPGer.

With overhauled graphics mod. (Click to Zoom)