The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Table of Contents
/Andasreth Propylon Index/

The greatest strength of Morrowind is that you can go anywhere and do anything. You have much more freedom than any other Console game. You have the power to deviate from or completely ignore the plot, complete quests in nearly any order, even destroy key plot characters and ruin the story. The world (island) seems vast with dozens of cities and thousands of citizens. The weaknesses are a somewhat buggy and imbalanced game play.

One of the most frustrating thing in almost any game is to see a place that, as a normal human, you could easily walk too but in the game you are prohibited. Maybe there is an impassible one foot high fence or a cliff you cannot fall from. In morrowind there are no such restrictions. If you can see, and can find the means, you can get there. Some mountains are too steep to ascend, until you can levitate. Some seas are too deep to reach the bottom, until you breath water. Some towns are floating above the clouds and you must fly to them. There are no cheesy limitations on modes of travel. It may be best to take the boat out to the island fortress, but you can swim, walk or fly if you have the means.

That same degree of freedom carries over to the rest of the game. You could almost beat the whole game without fighting. You can level by being a good diplomat, trader, or craftsman just as easily as being a more traditional wizard, warrior or thief. And you can steal anything you can see, no more walking into a store with all the goods lying around and magically protected by the plot. Of course, if you get caught you get thrown in jail, which costs time and money unless you can escape. Really though, jail is bad because you lose skills, so never get caught. You can design your own spell variations, and your own magic items. Sometimes, your items and spells are better, sometimes not, but the choice is yours.

When you first start the game, and you walk as fast as a real (slow) person, the island is vast. You start in a little town with a few starter quests to get you familiar with the controls. As you advance, you get a little faster and you use the various mass transit options, things are still huge but a little more manageable. It is wonderful to be able to run into the sea and drown or be eaten by a fish, fall off a cliff or tall building to your doom, or otherwise perish in all the silly ways that most games protect you from. But as you advance, some of the flaws in the game stand out.

As you explore the world, your saved game grows and grows, and at some point it gets unwieldy and the game becomes unstable. If you just play the main quests through this will probably never happen, but trying to discover all the content and hidden treasures in the game is apparently too much. Once you get to certain point in exploration, you must save pretty often. The other big bug is that, once you fly a lot, most maps have holes in the walls you can slip through to avoid the map. This is a nice time saver, but it can be a spoiler for some things.

It is a little too easy to become absurdly powerful. Alchemy is a good example of this. With some basic skill in alchemy you can create intelligence potions, which boosts your skill in alchemy, which lets you make better intelligence potions, until all your potions are so powerful they are unusable. You can easily get to the point where you can cross the island in a few seconds, where a beginning character would literally take days. Really, I love the fact that the game is imbalanced and freeform, but it should be a little harder to tilt the game in your favor.

When you first start the game, you are on a boat and must make your way to the Census Office. There you pick your name, race, gender, appearance, skills, class, attributes and star sign. I would recommend Breton or maybe High Elf for their racial (magicka) bonuses, mostly because the other bonuses are not that helpful. Some of the other races look cooler, and there are a few story lines that are different for each race. Each race has a total of 45 skill bonus points. The racial bonuses, all told, are pretty nominal so looks could easily be the deciding factor. When picking your appearance, use the right joystick to spin the head.

Note that after picking all these things, you will come to a final confirmation page where you can change them all. At that point, you can also see all the numbers that go with various racial modifiers and other choices.

The main selection is in picking or designing your class. It is probably better to design a class, but the first time through you could pick or let the game pick for you. Class design is a little counter intuitive, because you do not necessarily want the most important skills to be major skills. There are four things to pick for a class, the name, specialization, favored attributes and skills. Major skills start out with a higher score than Minor skills. The name can, of course, be anything from Lowly Janitor to Grand Inquisitor. The Specialization is generally whatever category you choose the most skills in. Favorite attributes will start a little higher than others.

The way skills and attributes improve in the game is with use. When you use a skill you get better at it, and eventually it goes up. Improving your skills by at least 10 points (up to 30) will give you bonuses to the governing attributes when you go up a level. This means that skills you use more will go up faster, so they need not start out as high, with a few exceptions. It also means that you should have at least one skill for each attribute, and focus on improving skills for a particular attribute before leveling up. In general, you only need one type of armor (including unarmored) and weapon (including hand-to-hand), and can use other slots for more interesting things. You start with all the skills, you are just assigning bonuses. On the other hand, skills with low scores tend to fail, so it is harder to use and improve them.

For combat, weapons are better than spells, especially in the beginning. There are, however, many good spells for other purposes. Speechcraft, Mercantile and Alchemy are probably the best general skills to have. Acrobatics, Athletics and Alchemy are the easiest skills to improve, which gives nice bonuses to those attributes. I found Alteration, Conjuration and Mysticism to have the most useful spells, although you will eventually want them all.

Once you have picked your skills, pick the specialization and favorite attributes. Specialization improves the skills, so pick whatever you have the most skills in. On a tie, pick the one with more minor skills. Whatever attributes you have the most skills for will go up the fastest, and whatever skills have the best attributes will be the most usable. But once you get to 100 there is no more improvement, so you could pick luck which has no skills. Whatever attributes you pick get a little bonus.

Now pick your start sign. They all have nice bonuses, but I like the Atronach. Stunted Magicka means you can not regain magic by resting. This is a significant limitation for spell casters in the beginning, but the spell absorption is huge and magicka bonus makes up for it later in the game. This may not be the best pick for a first time player. The Mage, Shadow, Tower and Warrior are also good picks. Choosing to Fortify an attribute sounds nice in the beginning, but feels like a waste once you cap out your attributes at 100. If this is your first time through, then an attribute boost or Ritual healing might help.

As I was writing this, I was making a character. I chose a High Elf male born under the Atronach. I chose Block, Heavy Armor, Long Blade, Speechcraft and Mercantile as Major skills and Alchemy, Alteration, Conjuration, Mysticism and Athletics as Minor skills. I chose Personality and Luck as attributes. I may never play the character, but there it is. The character I brought too the highest level was a Breton.