The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Never before has anyone been able to craft an RPG of such exquisiteness and depth. I picked it up 3 years ago, and after first playing it, I was not the same person, and it continues to waste weeks of my life time and time again. No wonder I haven't been laid.

The game is completely open-ended. You could avoid the main quest entirely if you wanted, racking up wealth and treasures in the countless sidequests featured. When creating your character, you can pick your gender, pick out of 10 races to play as, your class, and your birthsign. Their are dozens of skills to choose, all representing either Combat, Magic, or Stealth. But the way you level up is especially interesting. Instead of gaining experience points, you develop your character by actually developing their skills, similar to Final Fantasy II. If your fight with a Long Sword, your Long Sword skill will increase. When enough skills have increased, you level up, and raise attributes. You could conceivably create a dagger-wielding berserker with an arsenal of stealth spells, or exactly the opposite. It makes the most sense out of any role-playing system I've ever experienced, and it allows you to create any type of character you want.

While playing, you can really become immersed into the game world and your character. I often make up backstories in my head and play out scenarios and ramble dialog to myself, truly playing the role of my character.

But enough about character development. I haven't even gotten started on the game world itself. It is 8 square miles big, and so richly detailed you can feel like your in it. According to many sources, the developers would hire "clutter monkeys" to decorate the interior spaces with useless junk, like plates, cups, bottles, torches, vases, and thousands of other different types of clutter, all of which can be freely manipulated. The terrain is varied, with mountains, rocks, trees, and towns with unique architecture dotting the landscape, all rendered in beautiful graphics. The towns are populated with NPCs, most of them uninteresting, but sometimes you come across unique characters and unique oddities.

Obviously, there is an endless variety of equipment to be found. Weapons range from basic weaponry like Spears and Steel Daggers, to exotic weaponry like Glass Longswords and Ebony Warhammers, all free to use at any level you wish (good luck finding stuff like that at level 1 though).

There are several different factions and guilds to join, including the Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Thieve's Guild, 3 vampire factions, and 3 great houses, House Hlaalu, House Redoran, or House Telvanni (you can only join one house at a time).

But what really makes Morrowind have endless replay value is it's customizability. Shipped with Morrowind is the Elder Scrolls Construction Set, which lets you modify just about any aspect of the game you wish. Once you get the hang of it, it's pretty easy to use. There exists an immense modding community, with mods fitting just about any purpose. The mods are THE reason to buy the PC version and not the Xbox version.

The game is not perfect. The combat can sometimes be boring, and unless you have the Tribunal expansion, your journal will become an unorganized mess. Some reviewers noted that the graphics can slow the game down, but I never had a problem, so I cant complain. These errors are in general overshadowed by all the positive aspects of the game itself.

As I'm sure you'll understand by now, Morrowind is possibly the greatest game in recent memory. Even if you don't like games like this, Morrowind will draw you win like a black hole and never let you out.

The guys at Bethesda have always had great story lines and Bloodmoon is no exception. Unlike Tribunal, Bloodmoon's plot does not involve game impairing ninja's around every turn. It adds another dimension to the game, werewolves. Werewolves have more too them than vampires did. They have their own movie when you transform, they can jump high, and attack well. Another bonus are the new movies. The original Morrowind had about 3 movies. Bloodmoon has a movie for about every quest. Bloodmoon opens up a whole new region with new opportunities. The only problem I noticed was how hard it was to get there. You can not take the standard silt strider and there is only 1 boat to get there. Along with the travel problems, with the exception of Raven Rock there is not Inter island transport, which means that you must walk every where. Then again, this give you more opportunities to explore the beautiful, fulfilling Bloodmoon experience.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is, quite simply, the best RPG ever! The story is so broad and the world is so open. My only gripe is that you can only wander throughout the island of Vvardenfell. I wish that Bethesda would release an expansion of the entire province of Morrowind, or even better, the entire continent of Tamriel. All that aside, this is still the best RPG ever! You start out on a ship. You have been a prisoner of the Imperials, but the Emperor has set you free, though you don't know why. After you give your race, sign, and class, there is absolutely nothing that you have to do. But, there is plenty that you can do. You can do whatever you want. There is a main quest, but there is no pressure to get started on it. You can join one or more of various factions and guilds. You can become a thief or an assassin. There is no end to what you can do. If you have the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansion packs, there is even more for you to do. It is possible to play this game for weeks at a time and never run out of things to do. It's great fun. Everyone should own this on either the PC or the X-Box.

9.8/10

"The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind" is, in my mind, the best RPG that's been produced to date. It is the only completely open-ended RPG that I've seen. With virtually no limitations placed on where you can go or what you can do, it propels itself into a whole new level of RPG. In fact, this game allows almost too much freedom. At times it can be overwhelming and exhausting, but those things are also what make it refreshing. There are numerous factions and outfits that you can join completely at your own discretion. The game also has a unique system of remembering what you've done. Like I said, you're free to do whatever you want, whenever you want to do it. You can kill anyone, rob anyone, fight anyone, etc., and there are several ways that you can do each. There is a thin storyline that drives the game forward, which you are free to pursue or not at your leisure.

I played this several years ago and for some reason stopped. Three years later and 6 years after its release, I've become an addict again.

Morrowind is a unique RPG experience that I have enjoyed more than any other. The story takes place on a human empire's furthest and most recent conquest - the island of Vvardenfell. The island is populated by Dark Elves, or Dunmer as they refer to themselves, as well as many original and unusual natural and unnatural flora and fauna.

The world seems enormous due to the rich layers of detail and the breadth of quests available. It is actually considerably smaller than either of the previous entries - Arena and Daggerfall. But it is much more interesting due to the detail. I have only played Daggerfall, and it was enjoyable to an extent, but it was just too cookie-cutter for my tastes. Every building and town looked the same, and the dungeons were a mess of weaving, 3D corridors that were extremely tedious to navigate, even with the minimap.

Although Morrowind scales the size of the world down a bit, that is the only thing about the game that is smaller. There are a number of "guilds" or other organizations that can be joined, each with their own ranking system and multitude of quests that take the character to the far corners of the island world. The environs are richly detailed, with varied terrain, numerous towns that are all unique in layout and architecture, fantastic environmental effects like sandstorms and rainfall, and a dramatic night sky filled with stars.

The best part of the game is that it is almost entirely open ended. You can play any type of character you wish, from a virtuous crusader to a dastardly villain. You like to steal things? There are valuables everywhere for the taking (but not without consequence). You prefer to be a noble warrior? There are a number of guilds and quests to suit your sense of right. How about a bloodthirsty barbarian? Got you covered. Maybe a mafia-like hit-man? You bet! Or maybe you are more of a pacifist that would prefer not to fight at all unless it's absolutely necessary? You'll be very busy here. Or just maybe - you'd like to be all of these rolled into one? Well guess what? You can! Now there are competing factions, and law to be upheld, so your decisions may not be without consequences. But with a little caution (and resorting back to saved games), you can be a very successful career criminal in this world. In fact, there are a number of illicit trades that you can become involved with, including slave trading, narcotics, murder for hire, and of course theft. There is even some implicit prostitution in several of the towns. This is not Grand Theft Auto, but the criminal underworld is just below the surface with many opportunities for those who are so inclined.

I stressed the criminal element here merely to demonstrate the game's depth. There is also much political intrigue that the character can become involved with. This makes for some very interesting game play with numerous side stories to be told. Now to solve the game, you must eventually become involved in the "main" quest. But there is so much else to do that you may very well forget about this for a long, long time. In fact, you can come back to it whenever you wish without penalty.

The game relies on a skills-based system for character advancement. You start with a set of skills, ranging from weapons and armors to speechcraft and mercantile. Each one improves with use only. There are no "experience points" for killing monsters. If it takes you two swings to kill a monster, then the skill for the weapon you used increases by two swings. With the skills trainers and opportunities to use these skills, they are increased fairly rapidly, resulting in level increases.

With all the glowing praise I have for the game, there is still room for some criticism. Although increasing one's skills and wealth early in the game is a challenge, as it progresses this becomes easy to the point of tedium. Some of the very valuable items that are supposed to be rare seem to appear with frequency. And the character eventually gets so much outstanding equipment that he/she becomes nigh invincible. Many would not consider this much of a flaw, but when the game fails to challenge it becomes less appealing. There is still an incredibly interesting story and quests to follow, but I feel that some of the game aspects should have been redesigned. It is truly a paradise for the power gamer, however. The combat is rather straight forward and simplistic, but this is not the main focus of the game as it is with so many others - in nearly all other RPG game titles the character must wade through and kill hordes of things just to level up and advance along in the game. You could technically advance to a high level in this game without killing a single thing (although that might become a bit tedious and boring). The only other problem, in a way, is that the game is of the "sandbox" variety, meaning that it never really ends. It is rather anti-climactic.

When all is said and done, however, this tops my list of the best RPG experiences of all time. Immersive, entertaining, with a phenomenal breadth of things to do, places to go, and people to see, this is an experience that any RPG fan would be loathe to miss out on. Do yourself a big favor and go get the Morrowind Game of the Year Edition as soon as you can. I have not played Oblivion yet, so it may even be better. But Morrowind must even then be highly enjoyable.