The Elder Scrolls series is known for offering a role-playing experience that is deep in story and wide in content. Morrowind is the third entry series, and it certainly is not departing from this series tradition.
Yet, booting up Morrowind would reveal to any series veteran the most major change that it offers: the switch to a full 3-D world, specifically one powered by the GameBryo engine. It is an engine that is capable of generate expansive environments almost seamlessly, with hardly any noticeable loading times. However, it will also be known for issues that are less praiseworthy, as will be elaborated on later.
Firstly, this review will touch on the backstory and settings of Morrowind. The Elder Scroll series had been one to give more than a hint of the settings through the names of its entries; Morrowind, as its name suggests, will take place in the province of Morrowind, which is one of the regions of the continent known as Tamriel.
To be specific, the official campaign in Morrowind will take place on the island of Vvardenfell, the main landmass of Morrowind and where most of its indigenous civilization and culture are located. To be even more specific, the local people are the Dunmer, also known as the Dark Elves. Like in the previous games, the story will concern the local history and legends, though this review will not elaborate on this much because this would constitute a spoiler.
It should suffice to say that the player character will arrive on Morrowind under circumstances that would appear to be mere coincidences, though eventually turns into events which would reveal that they are not.
Speaking of player characters, the races that were featured in Daggerfall (the second entry in the series) return in the series with their racial bonuses to skills and stats altered here and there to fit the different gameplay and physics system offered by the GameBryo engine of Morrowind. There are also two new races: the Imperial and the Orc.
The Imperial is a statistical bridge between the magically inclined Breton and the brutishly valiant Nord sub-species of humans, while the Orc (which was originally little more than a monster archetype) is meant to accommodate playstyles that are oriented around straight-forward scuffles. However, following the tradition of the series, a player character of any race can be developed in any manner that the player wants, regardless of the canonical lifestyle preferences of the members of these races.
Like its predecessor, Morrowind has the player character (and NPCs) being subjected to a system of attributes, which is of course a common aspect of RPGs. For better or worse, the attributes still work a lot like they did in the previous game, e.g. Strength still controls damage done by weapons that have to be physically handled and Agility still determines the chance of hitting a target.
However, there are notable changes here and there. The most notable one is that the Fatigue rating of the player character (more on this latter) is now determined by both Endurance and Willpower, instead of just Endurance alone. This change allows player characters with less physical durability, namely those that specialize in spell-casting, to reliably retreat from battle simply by running away, which is a welcome improvement.
From these primary attributes, the derived attributes are obtained. Health, Magicka and Encumbrance return, governing the following, respective aspects of a player character: the ever-important Health determines how close the player character is to an ignominious death, Magicka determines how many spells that can be cast before the player character runs dry of magical energy and Encumbrance controls how much loot and gear that the player character can carry without being slowed to a crawl.
Fatigue returns but with a different form in Morrowind. That Morrowind is now a full 3-D game that allows the player character to run, swim, jump and even fly (more on this later) to just about anywhere meant that there can be quite a lot of exploits with the physics and collisions systems in the GameBryo engine; Fatigue mitigates these somewhat by acting as a limit to the physical exertions that a player character may perform.
Fatigue is reduced by running, jumping or attacking with physical weapons. Once Fatigue is reduced to low levels, it not only affects these actions, but also others, such as (even) the casting of spells. Generally, the performance of these actions is reduced, e.g. longer attacking/casting animations, shorter jumps and reduced physical damage dealt. These changes make Fatigue more important than ever, especially in battle. A wise player would stock Restore Fatigue potions or other means, in addition to the usual resources for replenishing Health and Magicka.
Morrowind does not just re-use mechanics that had been in previous Elder Scrolls games; it also offers a new one in the form of Birthsigns, which confers permanent bonuses onto the player character (and in the case of some Birthsigns, permanent penalties as well). This new mechanic makes use of previously unexplored canonical lore in the Elder Scrolls IP, namely the significance of astrological studies and the tangible effect of star constellations on the destiny of a newborn member of the world. For example, there is the Birthsign of The Thief, which is associated with recklessly bold and lucky individuals and, in-game, grants evasion bonuses against physical attacks.
Most of them would appear to be balanced against each other gameplay-wise, though there are some that would be more favoured than the others, due to the designs of the other characteristics that have been mentioned earlier and which these Birthsigns would affect.
One of the biggest examples is the Atronach Birthsign, which increases the player character's Magicka reserves and resistance against spells while removing his/her ability to restore Magicka in any way except by potions. Yet, this would be a small setback to series veterans, who know that Magicka cannot be reliably restored without resorting to potions and that resting to replenish Magicka is not an ever-available option.
Following the tradition set by its predecessors, Morrowind does not have the player character's capabilities permanently restricted by rigidly designed classes; instead, what a player character can do is defined by how much effort that the player has invested into his/her skills (and attributes).
If there is a major system that has undergone major changes since Daggerfall, that would be the set of skills in this game. At first glance, it would appear that the new skills in Morrowind are mere renamed variants of the ones in Daggerfall, but they also have substantial changes that are either subtle or significant.
For example, Speechcraft is the predecessor's Streetwise and Etiquette skills combined and made simpler. Any attempt at diplomacy, threats of harm or brown-nosing would have its chance of success dependent on this skill, some of them entirely.
Some skills in Daggerfall do not return. One of these is the Medical skill, which is important when identifying any special injuries or ailments that the player character has when he/she rests. Morrowind removes the need for this skill by simply telling the player which disease that his/her player character has. Another that does not return is Critical Strike, which determined the chance for the player character to score critical damage with any attack in the previous game. Instead, rolls for critical damage are now worked into the respective combat skills. The Thaumaturgy school of magic has also been removed, and instead its spells have been absorbed into the other schools.
More skills that do not return include the monster-evading skills in Daggerfall, namely the (oddly-named) ones like "Dragonish", "Impish" and "Orcish", among others. (The last example's removal is particularly significant, as Orcs are now recognized as an actual sapient race capable of being civilized.)
This also means that all monsters and humanoid enemies that are designed to be hostile by default are virtually guaranteed to be outright hostile. If the player wants to evade them, he/she will have to resort to the Sneak skill.
Speaking of Sneak, this is the re-incarnation of the Stealth and Backstabbing skills. However, unlike Stealth, which is little more than a modifier for monster encounters in Daggerfall, Sneak is a mode that can be toggled on or off. Sneaking determines how difficult it is for other characters (NPC or monster) to detect the player character; like its predecessor, Sneaking is dependent on luck, so a high skill rating may not necessarily guarantee that the player can get by unnoticed. However, if the player character can get close enough to a target without being spotted, he/she can open up combat with a critical hit, or even more of these if the target remains unable to spot the player character.
The litheness of the player character is now governed by two skills: Acrobatics and Athletics, which replace the (more mundanely named) Climbing, Jumping and Running. The luck-dependent mechanics of the latter have been replaced with physics-based mechanics that are much more reliable when used to traverse across the lands. Generally, the higher Acrobatics is, the higher that the player character jumps and the higher that he/she can fall from without taking damage. Likewise, a high rating of Athletics enhance the mobility of the player, allowing him/her to run and swim faster.
These two skills, and the Gamebryo Engine, make for experiences that are both terrifically entertaining and frustrating.
There can be great glee to be had from finding out a way to circumvent physical obstacles and hostile encounters between the player's current location and destination simply by hopping all over these and/or running past them. One example would be finding a way into the next area by scaling a chasm/valley/ravine without following the (seemingly) easier to traverse but often more dangerous paved or well-traveled paths around this natural obstacle.
Unfortunately, this entertaining activity also reveals issues with the physics system of the Gamebryo engine used. There are plenty of crevices, nooks and crannies, especially in rocky or ruinous locales, that the models for the player character, NPCs and monsters can get caught in and become hopelessly stuck. Subsequent patches to the game does mitigate this by allowing said models to slide out of the collision flaw, but they can still remain stuck if the terrain irregularity is especially rough. Some more patches eventually have reloads of the game becoming the most reliable way to solve this issue, but this of course comes at the cost of game immersion.
Security is the re-design of Lockpicking from Daggerfall. In addition to bypassing locks, Security is also used to disarm traps. The overall mechanics of lockpicking and trap-disarming are still probability-dependent (e.g. they still depend on fickle dice rolls), but the re-design also introduces new factors in the form of new items that contribute to these activities, namely lockpicks (for locks) and probes (for traps).
However, in order not to stymie a player who had not invested effort into the Security skill, the developers have also included alternatives to deal with locks and traps. There are, typically, keys for specific locks that can be located and retrieved (the spell "Detect Key" can be especially helpful here), the "Open" spell to bypass locks (but not traps), the "Telekinesis" spell to trigger traps from a safe distance and the use of items that can perform any of the above.
There are a lot of new skills in Morrowind as well. The most prominent of these include Alchemy, Enchant and Armorer, as they are associated with the new mechanics that made their debut in Morrowind.
The Elder Scrolls series have been known to give the player the opportunity to gather a lot of items, many of which have minor uses and are expendable. Morrowind is no different, and may perhaps have introduced even more of such items through the introduction of a system that allows the processing of these items into useful, completely free-formed potions.
The player character can collect ingredients for potions from an astounding number of sources: harvests from slain monsters, theft at stores, purchases (probably from the same stores) and forages through the natural (or somewhat natural) environments of Morrowind. These ingredients can then be merged together to form potions of wildly varying properties (which are included in the potion if two ingredients or more have the same properties). The player can even name these potions, which will in turn impart a status effect of the same name onto the user.
Not all ingredients have beneficial properties, so careless matching of ingredients can result in potions with deleterious side effects, which can be the developers' very amusing attempt at balancing the design of the new potion system. Furthermore, the weights of alchemical ingredients will result in different potion weights, e.g. heavy ingredients like monster organs, when mixed together, can create ridiculous two-pound potions.
Also, the player can opt to eat alchemical ingredients to obtain their most basic alchemical properties, which is an interesting take on the mechanic of food in RPGs of yore.
The player's skill and ingredients are not the only factors determining the potency of potions that can be cooked up. The player will need the Mortar and Pestle item as a basic tool for Alchemy, but he/she can augment potions further by making use of three other tools by the name of the Alembic, Retort and Calcinator, which improve the existing properties of potions.
The player will find that Alchemy will help a lot in both adventuring and obtaining money for other purposes, e.g. he/she can make powerful potions for expeditions into nasty regions of Vvardenfell while creating lesser ones for sale.
The Enchant skill is associated with the new mechanics of item enchantments and soul-catching. The mechanic of soul-catching will have to explained first, because it provides the main material that is needed for enchantment.
In Elder Scrolls canon, the existence of souls is very much proven and documented; this also meant that souls are pretty much open to exploitation too. Creatures with souls can have the insidious Soul-Trap spell cast on them, and if they are slain while still under the effect of this spell, their souls will not pass on and are instead trapped into seemingly innocuous items known as Soul Gems.
Souls apparently have "sizes" too, which are proportional to the intrinsic power that the victims of soul-trapping had before they were subjected to this hideous fate. The Soul Gems have different capacities too, in order to accommodate the souls that had been captured. The game will automatically calculate which Soul Gem a captured soul would best fit in, assuming that the player character has Gems of varying sizes; otherwise, the souls are crammed into inappropriate Gems, wasting either the affected Gems' capacities or the Souls' power. Fortunately, the game does warn the player of this.
Filled Gems can be used for either the enchantment of items or the refilling of the energy reserves of already enchanted items. However, it has to be noted here that the Gems are one-off expendables after being filled with souls; any excess soul energy that a Gem contains will be wasted.
Just about any character entity in the game can have his/her/its soul trapped, including even characters that the player brings into the game world, e.g. summoned creatures. Therefore, there is plenty of fodder for soul-trapping.
The filled Soul Gem can be used to enchant items through a couple of ways: the player can choose to approach an enchanter at Mage Guilds for a guaranteed-successful enchantment in return for quite sizable fees, or risk fickle dice rolls that may cause their do-it-yourself enchantment to fail and thus wasting the Soul Gem that is to be used. The player character's Enchant skill and Intelligence rating (and Luck) will be the main factors for this free-but-risky option.
Anyway, an item can be enchanted to have magical properties, the extent of which depend on the size of the Soul to be expended to power the enchantments. The enchantments are basically item-based versions of spells, though these draw from the item's energy reserves instead of the player character's Magicka. They can be a great crutch if the player character is not proficient in the actual schools of magic.
The Armorer skill is introduced together with a revamp of the item deterioration mechanic. The previous game required the player character to visit Armorer stores to repair items, and even so this is not an instantaneous process. (The ones in this game can repair items on the spot now, however.) Therefore, giving the player character a solution that he/she can effect himself/herself is a handy change that would be welcome by those who would rather not wait and make do without powerful/crucial pieces of gear.
(It has to be noted here that repairs provided by blacksmiths are instantaneous now too, which is a convenient change.)
However, to balance this convenience, repairing gear requires the use of items known as Hammers. There is a chance (but not always; there will more on achieving 100% chances later) to mess up a repair attempt and waste the Hammer being used. Hammers also weigh a pound each, thus necessitating a portion of the player character's load if the player is going on a long trip away from civilization.
Combat skills are more or less carried over (in name) from Daggerfall. The combat skills which are Axe, Blunt Weapon, Long Blade, Short Blade and Hand-to-Hand return almost completely intact in terms of design goals (but not in terms of mechanics entirely), though Archery has been renamed into Marksman. Spear is a new combat skill, namely one that governs the use of polearms (which in turn has been enabled by the use of the GameBryo engine).
As Morrowind offers a full 3D game world now, the player will have to ensure that any melee attacks or projectiles hit the hitboxes of the intended targets before the necessary rolls like to-hit chances, damage ranges and special effects are made. For better or worse, the game retains these rolls, despite the convenience and opportunity provided by the GameBryo engine for a re-design; there will be more elaboration on this much later.
An adventurer would not be much of one without some measure of protection. This typically comes in the form of gear, and this aspect of Morrowind is one of the traits that differentiate it from its peers and even its predecessors in the Elder Scrolls series; there are actually skills that determine how well the player character may use armor (or none at all).
These skills are Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Block and Unarmored. Heavy Armor concerns the use of armor made from dense materials, such as iron, steel and ebony, as well as more exotic variants of such armor (e.g. Daedric armor, which is a form of ebony armor that was forged using rather unnatural means). Light Armor concerns the wearing of armor made from materials like leather and Glass (which is apparently a very tough material in the Elder Scrolls universe).
These two skills determine how much protection that player characters can get from wearing these pieces of gear, namely the chance of an enemy hitting the player character and how much damage that the armor can reduce if the enemy manages to hit the player character anyway.
Block concerns the use of shields and works in a similar manner to the two armor skills mentioned above, but it also comes with a chance to completely block incoming melee attacks, negating any damage that would be inflicted on the player. (The Shield item will still be damaged, however.)
Unarmored is perhaps the most peculiar of the armor skills, as it is only active when the player is not donning any armor or is very lightly armored (it is not certain which; this may be a glitch with this skill). While Unarmored will not provide comparable protection to the other two armor skills if they are all of the same level, armor is encumbering, and not all player character races can wear any kind of armor. (The Khajiit and Argonians, for example, cannot wear any footwear due to the shape of their feet.)
Most of the magical skills, colloquially known as schools of magic, in Daggerfall have been carried over into Morrowind. However, canonical lore apparently is not something sacred to Bethesda Softworks: the Thaumaturgy school of magic has had its spells absorbed into the Alteration and Mysticism schools and subsequently eliminated.
There is also a new school of magic, which is called Conjuration and apparently takes advantage of the GameBryo engine's ability to easily spawn polygons and models into the game world. In-game, the player can conjure magical gear that is essentially a weightless version of Daedric gear but with comparable statistics and also skill buffs. This effectively gives magic-centric characters the ability to quickly arm and armor themselves. It also allows them to summon monsters of all kinds, from the beastly and undead to the otherworldly and demonic. (It is also very much useful for Soul-Trapping work, though whether this was a deliberate design or an oversight is not certain.) The Conjuration school of magic also contains a hard-counter against Undead, in the form of the Turn Undead spell.
In addition to the aforementioned Soul-Trap spell and the former Thaumaturgy's Detect spells (which allow the player to detect specific things, like nearby monsters, keys and enchanted items), Mysticism contains offensive Absorb spells, which leeches certain amounts of specific stats away from the target and give it to the player while the de-buffs are active. Mysticism also offers practical spells like Dispel and Telekinesis, and protection from hostile spells in the form of Spell Absorption (which gives a chance to nullify incoming hostile spells and convert these into Magicka replenishment) and Reflect (which gives a chance to reflect spells back at the caster). It also provides handily immediate escape options in the form of teleportation, either to randomly chosen temples or locations that the player has marked with the Mark spell.
(However, not all places in the game allow the player character to use teleportation. These include quest-centric places, where the player character is expected to earn his/her glory by not resorting to cowardly magical withdrawals.)
Alteration perhaps provides some of the most practical spells in the game, but also some of the most inane. There is the Feather spell, which will be pleasing to loot-happy players as it confers reductions to encumbrance. Conversely, there is the Burden spell, which can be used offensively to bog down enemies. The Open spell is a magical alternative to picking open locks (as mentioned earlier), while Lock locks containers (even those that do not appear to have locks, such as barrels and sacks) and doors, which can be used against NPCs to alter their behaviour (or cause their AI scripts to glitch in an amusing manner). Alteration is also used to conjure magical elemental shields that not only reduce incoming elemental damage, but also reflects some elemental damage to nearby enemies. It can also confer a mundane but very practical boost to armor rating via the Shield spell (which cannot be obtained via potions).
Finally, making use of opportunities afforded by the GameBryo engine, Alteration provides spells that are very, very handy for purposes of exploration, such as Jump (which increases jumping height), Water Walking (which allows the player character to run across bodies of water as a short-cut to elsewhere that would take longer to reach by land), Water Breathing (which aids underwater exploration), Swift Swim (which lets the player swim faster), Slowfall (which negates fall damage while also lengthening the time to reach the bottom of a fall, potentially allowing the player to control the direction of the descent) and Levitate (which effectively gives the player character the ability to fly).
The Illusion school of magic provides spells that make up for the removal of creature-centric skills in Daggerfall. There are the Calm spells, which allows the player to reduce the belligerence of hostile NPCs or monsters and may even cause them to stop fighting altogether. On the contrary, the Frenzy spells anger them to the point of attacking the player (the Frenzy Creature variant even causes affected monsters to attack targets other than the player character). The Rally spells encourage NPCs or creatures that are engaging in battle to continue fighting, lest severe injuries or other factors cause them to flee. The Demoralize spells do the opposite.
Illusion also offers spells that are useful in battle situations. There is Blind, which causes the AI scripts of enemy targets to reset with different (usually worse) factors for detecting the player character. Paralyze does exactly as what its name says, while Sanctuary increases the player character's chance of avoiding an incoming physical attack. Silence removes the ability of the target to cast spells (if he/she/it can cast spells), while Sound damages the target's chance to successfully cast spells without altering their AI scripts (which Silence does).
Stealthy endeavours also benefit from certain Illusion spells. Chameleon gives a boost to the chance of staying undetected by enemies, while Invisibility gives the ability to stay completely undetected in return for not being able to do anything else but moving around without causing the spell to be broken. Exploration work also gets support from a couple of Illusion spells: Light turns the target of the spell into a light source, which is handy when traveling in dark places, while Night Eye is more useful if the exploration of dark places has to be done stealthily.
Illusion has spells that would help in social interactions. Charm raises the disposition rating of an NPC towards the player character, essentially making them friendlier and more loose-lipped.
The school of Destruction would perhaps be the most used school of magic if the player wishes his/her player character to be highly inclined towards magic. There are Damage spells, which permanently de-buff statistics (though Health and Magicka can be restored via many means); Disintegrate spells which damage the gear of enemy NPCs; and Drain spells, which work like Damage spells except that their effects are only temporary.
The player can also fire off offensive elemental spells or poison targets for additional damage over time. He/She can also choose to cast spells that lower their resistances to these kinds of damage and de-buff spells, thus softening them up for further magical punishment.
Restoration is the source for most buffs and the means to remove de-buffs, as well as the typical replenishment of health. This school of magic allows for the removal of diseases, paralysis, poisoning and statistical de-buffs, and also offers buffs for just about any statistic, from the usual attributes and skills to resistances against elemental damage, poison and diseases.
Finally, there are non-combat-related skills, such as the aforementioned Speechcraft and Mercantile, which is still the skill that is used to determine initial buying/selling prices, as well as the success of haggling prices.
The introduction of most of the new skills and the re-design of pre-existing ones are meant to take advantage of the new mechanics and game designs allowed by the GameBryo Engine. While this has been mentioned before, the significance here is that the player would inadvertently find new ways to exploit the systems and programming used to advance these skills legally in manners that can be amusingly awkward to behold and more often than not, causes gameplay imbalances.
The first example of such exploits concern the methods used for obtaining the experience needed to advance skills with. For example, raising Athletics simply requires the player character to run and swim a lot. The player can choose to raise this naturally as his/her player character explore Vvardenfell, but an observant player would realize that the collision physics of the game will not stop models from performing animations even if they are running up against something that they cannot run through, e.g. models can run on the spot against walls and other obstacles. An observant AND unscrupulous player would use this oversight in design to have his/her player character running up against a wall for hours (with proper propping of control instruments), chalking up experience for the Athletics skill all the while.
Another serious exploit unfortunately concerns the new mechanic of Alchemy, which is fraught with a lot of design oversights that can be exploited by the unscrupulous player.
By default, the alchemical properties of an ingredient, of which there are up to four, are visually invisible to the player if his/her player character does not have the requisite level of Alchemy skill to reveal them. However, the properties are still there, to be used in making potions. Therefore, a player who has prior knowledge of the ingredients (e.g. from having looked at Wikis for the Elder Scrolls games) can still mix potions anyway.
Furthermore, that the game considers the effects of uniquely named potions as unique means that the common effects of similar potions can be stacked one of top of the other. For example, a player may make two different potions that Fortify a certain attribute for different amounts and durations, and the game will consider these two effects to be separate, even though they effectively do the same thing.
There is a ceiling of eight different effects that the player character and NPCs can have at any time, to balance the mechanic of buffing/de-buffing, though this will not stop the player from buffing certain aspects of his/her player character to ridiculous levels that can damage the stability of the game. For example, a player can attempt to fortify his/her player character's Intelligence with potions, which will in turn impart bonuses on any further potions made, and then repeat this loop to create stupendously overpowered potions that can cause glitches and bugs.
The same can be said of the new Enchantment system, which can be exploited in a similar way, e.g. Fortifying the Intelligence attribute and Enchant skill to create overpowered items. Fortunately, the required use of a Soul Gem of limited capacity provides some much needed limitation against this potential gameplay imbalance.
The new armor skills in the game would have been excellent all-around, if not for certain glitches and omissions that may or may not be deliberate on the part of Bethesda. For example, there is the aforementioned glitch with the Unarmored skill, which is supposed to work when the player character is completely unarmored but does not (at least for the launch version of the game). Another example is the acute rarity of one of the two pauldrons for the Daedric Heavy Armor, despite the game having sources for the other pieces of this set.
Even spells are not free from glitches; in fact, they can be terribly bugged. Bound items from the Conjuration school of magic are in particular bugged, especially when the player interacts with them via the Armorer skill, e.g. attempts to repair them. Some spells which have otherwise harmless effects are considered harmful by NPCs whom these spells are accidentally cast upon, such as the aforementioned Turn Undead spell that was supposed to be effective against Undead only.
Reloads of saved games may cause bugs in existing spell effects, such as the Feather buff causing an inexplicable increase in encumbrance when it runs out. Sometimes, even simple expiration of buffs may not work properly as intended, causing permanent glitches in the player character's stats.
Teleportation spells only work on the player character, so these can cause serious problems if the player attempts to teleport away during escort missions. Of course, these can be avoided if the player can refrain from using teleportation during said missions, but this effectively removes a viable escape option.
Due to the way that attributes and skills affect the player character's mobility, some buffs that enhance movement and affect encumbrance are less efficient compared to those that boost these attributes and skills. For example, the Fortify Speed spell is more efficient than Swift Swim in increasing the swimming speed of the player character, as it is less Magicka-intensive and also happens to work for land-based movement too.
The developers also may not have tested spells beyond their effect on the player character. For example, the Slowfall spell appears to work properly on the player character, but it works in reverse for NPCs, causing them to take more damage from falls instead of reducing it. The Destruction spells that concern diseases are also quite useless on anyone else other than the player character, as NPCs and monsters are not programmed to catch diseases like the player character does.
The glitches in spells extend to spell creation as well, and can even be exploited for unfair gains. The Soul-Trap spell, in particular, is infamous for a glitch that causes constantly active buffs and de-buffs when combined with other spells. Certain spells with instantaneous effects still have duration modifiers as well, making duration modifiers for these spells quite useless.
There are other minor oversights in the designs of spells, such as Demoralize Humanoid ending up in the Mysticism school of magic instead of the more appropriate Illusion (in the launch version of Morrowind).
If it is not apparent already, the new and revamped skills and mechanics in Morrowind make for an experience that is both exciting and frustrating.
Like other RPGs of the same setting, there are classes of player characters. These are mainly determined by the Specialization that was selected, the combination of skills that the player chose to major in and attributes that are exceptionally favoured when creating a character. As such, there are a lot of permutations of classes, with professions that are canonically known to exist in the Elder Scrolls universe, such as the Warrior and Spellsword, being official classes. The player can choose to create a custom-made class and name it.
The skills mentioned above are loosely categorized into three fields of Specialization: Combat, Magic and Stealth. Choosing a Specialization will cause these associated skills to advance faster than the rest.
Next, the player chooses the Major and Minor skills for the player character. There will be bonus levels for these skills, as well as a bonus to the advancement rate of Major skills; the other skills that are neither Major nor Minor suffer penalties instead. (These are stacked on top of the changes caused by Specialization.) The player also selects the player character's favoured attributes, which will be awarded bonus points that bring them above the rest at the start of the game.
While character levels are critically important in other RPGs as the most apparent way to advance the player character with, the independent progression of skills in Morrowind makes levels appear more like a brief indicator of the power of a player character. Nevertheless, the player will need to gain levels to unlock opportunities to advance his/her player character anyway. To gain a level, the player character will need to achieve ten levels, in any combination, in his/her Major or Minor skill. Once that is achieved, the player character will gain points to increase up to three of his/her attributes permanently with.
How the game calculates the amount of points that can be gained from a level-up is not told to the player, however. Instead, the player will have to figure this out himself/herself or resort to a third-party source of information. To describe this briefly, the player will need to increase the levels of skills that are associated with the attribute that he/she wants to increase; the highest number of points that can be obtained for any attribute is 5 points, which requires skill increases of at least 10 levels in the associated skills.
There also appears to be programming overflow issues with the threshold of Major/Minor skill level increases needed to obtain a level. Once ten levels have been achieved, the player will be prompted to seek a place to rest and meditate. Any further increases in the levels of any skills are not counted towards the number of attribute points gained. Furthermore, any level increases in Major/Minor skills will count towards the obtaining of the next level, and these won't count towards the number of attribute points either. In other words, if the player character gains ten level increases in Major/Minor skills in addition to the ones already obtained to achieve the next level, the player character will achieve the next level after that without any bonus attribute points.
This would not be an issue to players who are already well-informed on how the level system works, but new players are going to face difficulties in planning the progression of his/her player character. Furthermore, if the player character is on an extended dungeon romp, he/she may not have an opportunity to rest for a long while to cash in on a level increase.
(Bethesda Softworks has placed beds and mats in certain locations in some of the game's larger dungeons, and also plonked items down close to these places to justify their presence in dangerous dungeons that are not exactly conducive to resting. However, an experienced - and skeptical - player would recognize them as design conveniences.)
Throughout the player character's journey across Vvardenfell, he/she will come across many kinds of creatures, ranging from the local (and usually dangerous) wildlife to (even more dangerous) ghastly undead and the (usually hostile) Daedra. The player character will be using the bulk of his/her skills on these creatures, namely the combat-related ones.
Many creatures from the previous games return, such as generic feral beasts like the ubiquitous Mudcrabs, Rats and Slaughterfish (which infest waters) which are pretty much found all across Cyrodiil. Otherwise, the wildlife in this game are unique to the ecosystem of Vvardenfell, such as the Alit, their stronger Kagouti, Guar and flight-capable Cliff Racers, among others. These Morrowind-based creatures have models that look reasonably exotic, and are also quite well-animated.
Otherwise, they appear to be little more different than the convenient sources of experience points and loot (in Morrowind's case, alchemic ingredients) known as "monsters" that are found in many other high-fantasy games.
Another creature that is native to Morrowind is the Kwama, which are worm-/grub-like creatures that work the soil of Morrowind. Canonically, the Dunmer rear and tend to colonies of these creatures for their eggs, cuttle-meat and to exploit their tendency to continue digging deeper into the earth, thus exposing ore seams. In-game, this is portrayed through the presence of Kwama egg-mines, which are warren-like and heavily populated with Kwama sub-species variants that are generally docile (except the Kwama Warrior). Some of these mines are owned/operated by Dunmer mining clans; Dunmer workers will perform animations and scripts that actually remove items from these mines. These mines are also lined with rail systems to further enhance the ambiance.
These mines are canonically vital to providing the settlements of Morrowind with sustenance that is not tainted by an ancient curse on Morrowind (more on this later). This canonical element is not just for illustration of the story though. The player can somewhat partake in the Kwama segment of the Dunmer-dominated economy of Morrowind by taking over the ownership of an existing mine in one of the many quests in the game. This grants a source of income, which may be quite handy as long as the player cares to collect the earnings.
Being a high-fantasy franchise, the Elder Scrolls series has its fair share of the Undead. In Morrowind, they are typically found in or near catacombs and mausoleums, as well as caves or grounds tainted with necromantic influences. There are zombies, as well as animated skeletons armed with weapons and shields to eliminate. There are also ghosts as well, which have to be slain with spells, magical/enchanted weaponry and/or silver-lined weapons. Knowing whether an indoors dungeon is infested with Undead or not is easy: the musical soundtrack and ambient sounds will switch to appropriately ominous and foreboding themes.
The Daedra, which are supernatural beings that are very detached from mortals in behaviour, principles and personality, can be somewhat considered the equivalent of demons and devils that are typically found in high-fantasy games. However, the Elder Scrolls franchise provide them with canonical lore that are very different from the typical backgrounds of infernal beings that are seen in Elder Scrolls' peers. This lore can be read from the many books found in the game world, which also provides other kinds of reading if the player is inclined to know more about Elder Scrolls lore.
In-game, Daedra acts little different from the typical demons of high-fantasy games; most of them are by default quite hostile and aggressive, including the sapient and humanoid Dremora. However, wherever they do manifest in Vvardenfell, they menace anything else that is not Daedric, which can be an amusing sight if the local creatures stumble onto them.
Scamps and Clannfears form the bulk of Daedra that the player will encounter; these are weaklings among the Daedra, but would serve to show the player that Daedra tends to go after their targets quite relentlessly, even when compared to other creatures.
Later, the player will face more powerful Daedra. Some of these are in the form of Atronachs, which are the Elder Scrolls universe's equivalent of elementals. As to be expected of such creatures, they have a natural affinity for their associated elements, having resistances and spells that are based on these.
There will also be creatures that are associated that are associated with the Daedric deities, such as the Hunger (which uses its long tongue to attack opponents, which is an interesting animation), the Ogrim (which are bulky, slow and very tough; it has regeneration capability too) and the Winged Twilight (which by default cannot fly, oddly enough). There are also Daedra not affiliated with any god, such as the Daedroth, which is one of the toughest "feral" Daedra to battle.
Perhaps the most dangerous Daedra are the humanoid ones, namely the Dremora and Golden Saints, as they have the capability to equip various weapons and armor that NPCs (and the player character) can use. Some of them also happen to have different spells, adding to the unpredictability of battles with these Daedra.
Vvardenfell is an island with a long history that predates even the Dunmer. The Elder Scrolls franchise consigns its equivalent of high-fantasy dwarfs - called Dwemer - to a rather tragic fate, having them once raising a technologically advanced civilization on Morrowind and later suffering a cataclysmic doom of their own unwitting doing and at the hands of gods whose ire they earned. This is portrayed in the game through the presence of Dwemer ruins, which are not exactly dilapidated but are eerily devoid of sentient life. The reason for the continued absence of life in these places would be evident once the player encounters the Dwemer Centurions, who have a rigid policy of terminating anything that ventures into the ruins that they guard.
These automatons are perhaps the "creatures" with the most amount of animations in the game. There is the Centurion Sphere, which rolls about while making ominous clanking noises before deploying into its combat form, armed with a shield and sword. Then, there is the Centurion Spider, which launches poisonous projectiles at targets. Finally, there is the simply-named Steam Centurion, which is a powerful brute.
The fall of the Dwemer civilization is not the only historical significance of Vvardenfell that has it infested with localized, dangerous creatures. The dark legacy of the Dunmer themselves also spawns native but very unnatural monsters, known as Ash Creatures.
Fans of the Cthulu mythos will be able to notice some similarities between Lovecraft's works and the lore designs of the Ash Creatures. This inspiration can be most visually seen in the designs for the Ascended Sleeper, one of the most powerful Ash Creatures that happens to have a face which Lovecraftian fans would find very familiar. Other than that, an Ascended Sleeper is a flight-capable spell-caster that can fire off quite a lot of painful magic. The first encounter can be quite dreadful, as watching a seemingly clumsy and hideous creature taking to the air to launch harmful spells can be quite an experience.
The Ash Ghoul is one step below the Sleeper in the hierarchy of Ash Creatures. They also happen to look the most humanoid, and by the same note also happen to serve as NPCs to advance the story with. In fact, there are a quite lot of named Ash Ghouls, if only to show the extent of the organization of the Ash Creatures. Otherwise, they are proficient spell-casters like Ascended Sleepers, though they are grounded.
The Ash Slaves serve to show the deleterious side effects of the aforementioned magical disease, as they are generally mad (and hostile) and appear to have an amusing obsession with arranging furniture (where there are usually none around to be handled). The Ash Zombies are similarly deranged, albeit even more wretched.
The Ash Vampires are the "nobility" of sorts among the Ash Creatures, having perfectly utilized the dark magic that generated the said magical disease to turn themselves into unnaturally powerful spell-casters. They also happen to serve as bosses of sorts for dungeons located in the Ashlands of Vvardenfell.
Those that the magical disease robs of all sapience and wit turn feral, usually becoming Corprus Stalkers, who have the intelligence of high-fantasy zombies. The oddly named Lame Corprus is the advanced form (of sorts) of the Corprus Stalker, being substantially tougher to kill.
Perhaps the least documented creatures that can be encountered in Morrowind are the Vampires. There is very little in-game indication of where these creatures can be located, giving the impression that they are special, hidden treats that had been included in the game as a boon from the developers. There are also special quests and status bonuses (and penalties) oriented around Vampirism. However, interacting with these creatures is the only way to obtain these quests, yet vampires are inherently hostile creatures, so it would be easy for an unassuming player who does not already know of these quests to miss them by simply killing off any Vampire that he/she comes across.
The bonuses acquired from Vampirism can be tremendous, though whether they can offset the penalties that are also acquired or not is debatable. Once the player character is a Vampire, a lot of options of convenience, such as transportation, are locked out of the player's reach; guards that patrol settlements also tend to attempt to kill the player character on sight, and a lot of merchants simply refuse to do business. These can be debilitating setbacks that can severely discourage the exploration of Vampirism.
The placement of non-quest-related enemies in the game world is fixed, according to how the game developers would expect the player to have his/her player character venture forth into Morrowind with his/her progression through the main quest-line in mind. This means that player characters that venture off the beaten path to explore Morrowind can easily stumble into powerful creatures and be slain, which can be a frustration if the player is not informed of these placements and has not prepared get-away plans before going on explorations.
As to be expected from a role-playing game, there are quests to be had in Morrowind - lots of them in fact. There is the main quest line, which will concern the destiny of the player character and the aforementioned dark legacy of the Dunmer as well as the magical disease. This review will not describe the main quests in detail, but it should suffice to say that most of them work as intended, and there are plot twists that not only serve to deepen intrigues, but even change gameplay (somewhat) as well.
There are also quests that are intended to give the player a sense that his/her player character has a stake in the going-ons of Vvardenfell and a place of power in the institutions that govern this region of Cyrodiil.
Although the Dunmer civilization has joined the Cyrodiilic Empire of Tamriel as a province, they managed to retain a great degree of autonomy and cultural independence. The three Great Houses that the most influential people in Vvardenfell belong to are the embodiment of these perks. The player character can choose to join one of these Great Houses and thus obtain special quests, some of these being the attainment of a stronghold that will be created in-world to give the player character a place to stash away items (loose items in the game world disappear over time, or can end up being picked up and claimed by NPCs), all-day access to certain merchants and a steady source of income. There are also quests that involve intrigue and treachery among the three Great Houses.
Religion is one of the pillars of a civilization in a high-fantasy world, and the Dunmer is not an exception. The local religion is organized under the Tribunal Temple in the worship of three living Dunmer deities. In addition to providing quests that concern the destruction of threats to the Tribunal Temple and learning the tenets of the religion, the Tribunal Temple will also play an important part in the main quest, due to its origins in the dark legacy of the Dunmer.
However, it has to be noted here that the prerequisite for more involving quests requires the player character to visit seven shrines that are scattered throughout the island, which can be a bit of a hassle though in-line with the canonical lore of the Tribunal Temple.
The Imperial presence and the claiming of Morrowind as an Imperial province is portrayed through the presence of Guilds and the Imperial Cult that are commonly found elsewhere in Cyrodiil.
The Imperial Cult worships the Aedra, which are the ideological and existential opposites of the fickle Daedra. The player can choose to join this organization and thus obtain the benefits of being a member and also quests that typically involve around the philanthropic efforts of the Cult to provide the people of Vvardenfell with sustenance, succour and medicine, as well as the elimination of threats to the Cult and retrieval of artifacts of significance to the Cult. Unlike the Tribunal Temple's membership requirements, the Imperial Cult's only requires only a small donation.
One of the perks of being an Imperial Cultist is a reduced cost to pray at Imperial altars, which grants the supplicant full healing as well as curing ailments (if the player cannot do so himself/herself).
The Imperial Legion, being the Empire of Tamriel's military wing, has established their presence on Vvardenfell with several detachments, though each is only of platoon size (canonically to avoid offending the natives, who have their own armed forces). There is no requirement for joining the Legion, but, in keeping with the Legion's canonical insistence on martial discipline, wearing Legion-issue cuirasses is a must when receiving quests from the commanders of the forts and other fortifications that the Legion occupies. This can be literally cumbersome gameplay-wise, however.
The Guilds had been in previous Elder Scrolls games to give the player a sense of purpose and belonging for having a preferred playstyle. There are three Guilds, each of which cater to a different method of solving problems with, and all of them are practically mercenary in nature.
The Fighters' Guild is for those who are martially valorous. The quests offered by this Guild typically involves exterminating monsters and trouble-makers, among other dubious activities like collecting payments and assassinations with extreme prejudice; in other words, most of this Guild's quests often involve violence, which may be gratuitous to players who prefer brutally simple solutions to problems.
The Thieves' Guild has ever been an unofficial Guild of sorts, as it traffics in activities that are often illegal and murky, though its existence is somewhat tolerated as the Guild shares the greater interests of the other more "right-minded" factions. Therefore, they do not have publicly known bases of operations. Looking for these and agents of the Guild for recruitment can be amusing, as they require some persuasion (either through figuring out their allegiances or greasing their palms) before they loosen their lips.
As to be expected, the quests given by the Thieves' Guild has the player doing shady things, such as obtaining contraband, stealing goods and treasures (both valuable and sentimental) and covering the Guild's tracks from detection.
It has to be mentioned here that there is some friction between the Thieves' and Fighters' Guilds in Morrowind, revealed in a Fighters' Guild quest with an outcome that can affect the player character's relations with either Guild. This can result in the player character simply losing the opportunity to join the Thieves' Guild or advance further in it if one is already a member. Those who join the Fighters' Guild first to do its quests while planning to join the Thieves' Guild without knowing this would find, to their rude shock, that they have unwittingly closed off a segment of the content to be had from Morrowind. There is a work-around, but the player would only know of this if he/she had already read a walkthrough.
Otherwise, the friction between these two Guilds works out according to the designs that the developers have intended. There can be surprisingly a lot of intrigue to be experienced from the quests provided by these two Guilds, despite both being detached from the deeply engaging main quest.
The Mages' Guild does not have any quests that result in significant content being locked away from the player, though it does have quests that will affect relations with the other factions in Morrowind, namely House Telvanni.
As a member of the Mages' Guild, the player character has to perform wizardry-related tasks, like obtaining staffs, secure magical artifacts and enforcing the regulation of magical training, among other things. In return, the player gains access to magical supplies and spells, as well as Guild members that help the player with the new magic-related game mechanics in Morrowind.
The Morag Tong is practically a guild of assassins, apparently one that is sanctioned by the Empire but only for assassinations in Morrowind. Tracking down its headquarters is the prerequisite to joining the Tong.
The quests offered by the Morag Tong typically involves assassinating NPCs of all sorts; this will expose the player to the mechanics of interacting with NPCs, which will be described later.
There can be a lot of trouble that would come from simply attempting to kill targeted NPCs outright, so the game developers have included canonical lore that practically amounts to licenses to kill, which can be shown to any nearby guards to convince them to look the other way. This can be quite contrived and require some suspension of belief, despite the canon about the Morag Tong's modus operandi and influence in Morrowind.
There is a reward for assassinating targets discreetly, which is a better increase in favour with the Morag Tong, though the player can make use of certain exploits in the said mechanics for interacting with NPCs to have the game consider the murder as discreet, even if it occurred within view of many eye-witnesses.
In fact, these assassinations can be quite boring, as there are few other ways to kill the target than to put him/her to the sword (or any other appropriate lethal device).
Fortunately, the Morag Tong also offers other quests that do not involve the removal of NPCs with little significance to the Morag Tong other than being the requested targets of its customers. Nevertheless, these still involve quite a lot of killing, especially of agents belonging to a rival assassins' guild.
Advancement in the above-mentioned factions is not only quest-driven, but is also dependent on the player character's statistics. The player will have to achieve the appropriate levels of Guild-related skills before he/she can advance to the next rank. Gaining ranks will grant perks like discounts at Guild stores as well as the use of Guild facilities, some of which can be handy, such as the instantaneous teleportation service provided by the Mages' Guild.
Unfortunately, advancements up the ranks of these factions can be bugged. The player may find glitches that cause inappropriate changes in rank, or otherwise damage the scripting of advancement. The designs of these quests may also result in outcomes that prevent the undertaking of other quests, such as the removal of NPCs that would otherwise have been instrumental in giving quests to the player character.
The Daedric gods, who are ever capricious, fickle and jealous of the mortal world, also have a presence in Morrowind. This is in the form of secret cults (as Daedric worshippers are persecuted) and even more insidious organizations, such as the aforementioned Morag Tong.
Exploration of Morrowind may reveal the locations of shrines to these deities, thus allowing the player character to start quests that are dedicated to appeasing these gods. These will involve meddling in the affairs of both mortals and Daedra alike, and the rewards are usually powerful Daedric artifacts with wondrous powers, including one that will be immensely useful for the new mechanic of enchanting.
There are also a bunch of miscellaneous quests that can only be started by exploring Morrowind and talking to the oddly placed NPC or two, or even other actions like searching a body or simply stumbling into a scripted location. Quests like these keep the player on his/her toes, always wondering whether the next foray/spelunking into uncharted regions would yield a new quest or not.
All of the above quests and new game mechanics would not be fun if there is not some (relatively speaking) tangible items for the player character to use.
There are a lot of items in the game, as well as many categories; this is due to the design of the player character's (and NPCs') gear-equipping system, which allows him/her to don many armor pieces in any combination. There are also plenty of weapons to go with the many weapon skills in Morrowind. To describe them in this review would be exhaustive, so it should suffice to say that many of them work as intended - at least the ones which are not magical/enchanted.
The magical/enchanted ones are obviously more powerful and coveted than their regular counterparts. They typically grant the use of item-based spells and even sometimes impart constant buffs (or de-buffs), as mentioned earlier. Unfortunately, they can be quite bugged at times, affected by glitches that cause them to be impossible to repair or recharged, or can have exploits that break the game in ways that the game developers have not intended.
An RPG would usually not be one without NPCs. The Elder Scrolls franchise especially depends on NPCs to deliver just about every aspect of its games, from its essentials like the main story and gameplay mechanics to secondary design goals like the game's humour and optional sources of Elder Scrolls canonical lore. Most importantly though, Morrowind uses NPCs to show a semblance of civilization in Vvardenfell.
NPCs are usually named characters who will go about what seem to be daily routines of working, eating and sleeping, though these are are very simple and usually restricted to a small location for the player's convenience of finding them if he/she needs to tackle quests involving them. They also have character levels, not unlike the player character, for the purpose of certain kinds of interaction scripts.
Outside of combat, interacting with them pauses the game and brings up the dialogue tab: all lines are delivered via text. Only a few NPCs have voiced-over lines; these are usually very important NPCs and even so, their voice-over tends to be delivered outside of dialogue sessions. Therefore, players who had been impressed by the aesthetics upgrade that Morrowind has over Daggerfall may be somewhat disappointed by this continued dependence on text to deliver information to the player from NPCs.
Some NPCs, who usually also happen to be important to the proper undertaking of quests, provide services to the player character. There are the sorts that an RPG veteran would recognize as typical merchants or vendors, though in Morrowind, some of them only trade in specific types of goods instead of being an open trader. (There are open-traders, but these offer very lousy prices.)
Other service-rendering NPCs include Blacksmiths, who function as both merchants and repairers of armor and weapon; Enchanters, who sell/buy enchantment-related items and also enchant items and recharge depleted ones for fees; Priests, who in addition to selling all kinds of goods related to acts of piety, also impart useful information on those that they worship; Spellmakers, who help the player character craft new spells; Tavern-keepers, which sell sundry goods and offer beds for rent and rest; and Transporters, who provide travel options that do not require the player to have his/her player character hoof it on foot to the next destination (thus saving real time).
Perhaps the most important of these service providers are the Trainers, who will train the player character in specific skills and automatically raise said skills to the next level. This can be handy if the player would prefer to develop his/her player character further before venturing out to dangerous locations.
Every NPC that can be spoken to has a Disposition rating, which will determine how the NPC reacts to the player character as he/she passes by (usually with voiced-over lines that are uttered as the NPC stops and turns to look at the player character), or when the player character engages in dialogue with them, if possible. Disposition is initially affected by the player character's Personality and Reputation (more on this later) and also the player character's equipped gear (which can be a humourous factor).
Generally, having a higher Disposition means looser tongues and lower prices for services and goods (if said NPCs are merchants). The