Recently we reported the news that Zenimax, parent company of Bethesda Softworks is about to buy ID Software, also in that same week Bethesda released both Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition and Oblivion: Game of the Year Edition for some very reasonable prices. I decided to look at the cheaper and older of these two games to see if it stands the test of time and decide whether it is still worth playing and how well it stands alongside newer Bethesda Softworks titles such as Oblivion and Fallout 3.
Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition is the collection of The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind along with the most up-to-date patches, the two expansion packs; Tribunal and Bloodmoon as well as the downloadable content. Released in 2002 on Xbox and PC with the game of the year edition coming in 2003 this multi-award winning RPG has seen high critical acclaim netting it 3 game of the year awards and 3 editor’s choice awards from the gaming press and currently has a metacritic and gamerankings score of 89. Like other titles by Bethesda Softworks Morrowind uses a huge open world much like we have seen in Oblivion and Fallout 3.
This game is genuinely huge
Morrowind is a first person RPG, with the option of selecting a third person viewpoint. It has a huge and varied and fantastically detailed and vivid open world which allows you to do quests at your leisure. It is a fully realised world which allows you to just jump in and see the sights and soak up the atmosphere of the world with literally thousands of NPC’s around many of which all have their own stories and unique social interactions, it is truly a joy to just spend time in the world. Given the huge world it may become easy to get lost in the world and it can get fairly hard to keep track of which quests have been taken up and which ones have been completed which is not helped at all by the games journal. The journal is a throwback from a by-gone age of gaming, it keeps track of every important conversation you have in the game and given the sheer amount of characters and unique dialogue in the game this is a huge amount and there is no way of sorting by quest or date and given the game’s sheer size and complexity by the time you are ending the game the journal may have well over 300 pages of information.
Morrowind follows the same level progression system introduced in The Elder Scrolls 2: Daggerfall and later used in the sequel The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. Unlike other RPGs which use experience points from defeating monsters and completing quests, Morrowind uses a skill based system where you choose major and minor skills for your character upon creation and you gain levels by increasing the skill level by simply using the skills, for example you gain sword skills by killing things with your sword and merchantile skill increases by bartering for low prices at the shops in the ect. This makes the level progressions much less arbitrary than the classic xp based system, however it does mean you can pretty much get a lot of money and buy your way to a high level using the skill trainers in the game.
Morrowind is overall a very detailed and immersive game there are a few problems as there are with any game and it still stands today, over seven years after its initial release as a very good looking and detailed game even without the hundreds of texture packs and modification the PC version supports. The game will run with most systems as the system requirements, which were substantial at the time of release are now considered very low and will easily run on laptops and low end machines and the Xbox version is compatible with the Xbox 360. For the current steam price of £12.99 for the full game of the year edition (it should be noted you can probably pick up a disc based version of the game cheaper) this is a fantastic purchase for any fans of RPGs or open ended, sandbox style games or someone with a laptop taking a long journey looking for something to just eat up the time.
