What's Ahead: While Morrowind seems to have all the necessary elements to be an excellent game, it's still too early to tell how the final product will turn out. The graphics engine and game editor certainly look great, as do the detailed environments and characters. And since the team already has a powerful game editor built, all that is left to do is create the remaining parts of the gameworld and script the quests and adventures. To ensure that the game doesn't fall prey to the extensive bugs that plagued Daggerfall, the previous Elder Scrolls game, the Morrowind team has a full-time bug hunter that has been finding and correcting bugs since very early in the development cycle.

Combat in Morrowind will be based on three main attacks: slash, chop, and jab. Each weapon in the game will be most effective with a specific attack--spears, for instance, are more effective when used with a jab, while axes are better used with the chop attack. The game will also feature a complex skill-based role-playing system, as well as a wide variety of spells, potions, and other items.

Bethesda decided to forgo multiplayer support in favor of creating a spectacular single-player experience, and to extend the longevity of the game, the developer is including one of the most comprehensive game editors ever to ship with a role-playing game. In addition to building complete scenarios and scripting quests, the game editor will let you adjust the statistics of weapons, spells, potions, and other items, as well as those of monsters and non-player characters.

This holiday season Bethesda plans to release what it sees as the ultimate single-player role-playing experience, but it is also counting on the support of the players. If the company holds up its end of the deal, let's hope the player community cooperates by producing and sharing user-created worlds and adventures, essentially giving Morrowind almost limitless replayability.