Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Finally a Morrowind appreciation thread, I see you N'wahs have finally seen the light.

Morrowind changed RPGs. Or at least the expectation of what a videogame RPG should be. A first truly successful open world first person RPG which met a mass market audience (thanks largely to the Xbox port).

The downside, though, is the mechanics. They were barely fit for purpose at release. They certainly don't stand up to modern day scrutiny.

Morrowind presents itself as an action RPG, but the reality is that combat is always a virtual dice roll. You character may be performing what is dressed up as a responsive action (although the animations are terrible), but ultimately the game is still rolling a D20 and matching the outcome from a table. The number of failed physical and magical attacks is high. It's a very frustrating and unsatisfying system.

THere;s no real question that in terms of plot and world Morrowind is arguably the best game in the Elder Scrolls series to date. I can't imagine that the majority of players ever got to the end of its main story, but it was an outstanding game. I do think though that nostalgia has somewhat clouded our memory of the game as it was though. We tend to look at it as if it was perfection, when in reality it far from was.

And it's not just the combat. Aesthetically the base non-modded game looked a little ropey even at released. People harp on about how great it was that there were no spoonfed objective markers and how you had to discover new objectives through dialogue alone. But in reality that often did mean wandering around for hours trying to work out what to do. And you always knew which conversations would actually lead somewhere, because those where the ones which where highlighted as blue hyperlinks. It was far from as 'immersive' as some would have you believe.

I could never go back to playing Morrowind, the graphics are dated AF. Being spoiled with the newer eye candy games these days does that to you. I used to never be a graphics snob.

Despite the dated graphics I love the look of Vvardenfell. Mushroom trees, giant flea taxis, and buildings made out of bug shells. Love it. I also like how Morrowind uses the chosen one trope. Are you actually Nerevar reincarnated? No one can say for certain, though the gods will still try and make you their pawn anyway. The Elder Scrolls really needs this kind of creativity again in its writing department.

Just re-purchased from Steam. I had the discs up until recently but don't have a computer that can use them. Guess I could have bought an external CD drive but it wasn't necessary.

In any case, yeah, the graphics are so hard to deal with. I recall the storyline and I do know that it was one of the better games. Controls don't bother me too much but man is that world empty. I know there's a mod to populate the world since I had it in the past. It's available on Steam but I found out that some mods won't install until after you've already started at least one game.

This version was $7.50 and includes all DLC. My recollection is that it helps make it a very lengthy game.