The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Review by Steerpike
May 2002
Shameless Plug
We've also posted an Elder
Scrolls retrospective that discusses the earlier games in the
series and the impact they've had on the CRPG world, so I don't
want to waste too much time hashing over the history of the franchise.
With the big release of Morrowind, this series is officially
an elder statesman of CRPGsit is nine years old, with five
titles under its belt: the Elder Scrolls "series," consisting
of Arena, Daggerfall, and Morrowind; and the Elder
Scrolls "Legends," a Worlds of Ultima-style extension
of the universe, of which the loathsome Battlespire and the
thoroughly mediocre Redguard are part. If you sense in me
some ambivalence toward the Elder Scrolls, you're not far
off basethough I own every single one and rushed out to buy
Morrowind the day it hit shelves, the franchise has brought
me more disappointment than pleasure. But you'll experience all
of that story in the retrospective feature. This column focuses
on Morrowind for the PC. Console jockeys, be sure to check
out Skinny Minnie's upcoming sister review of Morrowind for
the Xbox console.
Originally (and more aptly) titled "The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion,"
Morrowind will submerge you in a xenophobic culture obsessed
with death, a land more remote and alien than any other in the sprawling
Empire of Tamriel where the games take place. The nation of Morrowind,
dragged kicking and screaming into the Tamrielic Empire, is the
mysterious kingdom of the Dark Elvesthe "Dunmer,"
as they call themselves. Misunderstood and perceived as corpse-worshiping
necrophiles by the rest of the world, the Dunmer keep to themselves,
doing little to discourage such rumor-mongering: it keeps strangers
out.
And strangers are most unwelcome in Morrowind, especially on the
bleak island of Vvardenfell where the game takes place. Even Dunmer
born elsewhere are treated as despised outsiders. A visitor to this
gloomy realm is well advised to finish his or her business and leave,
lest he/she be drawn into a dark web of political intrigue that
has been spun over thousands of years of internecine rivalry. It
makes life difficult indeed for your character, a former prisoner
in the distant imperial dungeons (at the outset, the specifics of
your crime are neither given nor necessary)for you are a stranger
to Morrowind who is not only unwelcome, but who has no idea what
your role in the nation's destiny may be.
Time to Spend Your $300 Gift from George W.
For those considering a purchase of Morrowind, you'd better
take a hard look at what your computer has under the hood before
you whip out your credit card. The system requirements for Morrowind
are nothing short of insaneBethesda Softworks suggests
a minimum of 800 MHz and 256 megabytes of RAM if you're running
Windows XP; I recommend more. It will gobble a gigabyte of hard
drive space and consume your Windows swapfile so voraciously that
some newsgroups are suggesting you set your minimum paging size
to another gigabyte. Though the game only requires a graphic card
with DirectX 8.1 support and 32 megabytes of onboard memory, Morrowind
is really made to shine with the newest generation of cards
onlyGeForce 3 and 4 (but not GeForce 4 MX), Radeon 7500 and
8500, and the upcoming offerings from Matrox and Creativethat
is, video cards that support programmable pixel shaders.
If you have the system to run it, though, Morrowind is worth
the horsepower it requires: it's the most beautiful CRPG I've ever
seen, and all those megahertz it demands go to very good use. A
brand-new engine brings the bleak world of Vvardenfell into jaw-dropping,
pixel-shaded glory. I was floored by the breathtaking vistas that
open up before you in the spectacle that is Morrowind's graphics
engine. The water, especially, is miles ahead of the usual effects
we see in today's accelerated games. Even the most I-don't-care-about-graphics
gamers will be drooling when they see raindrops pattering into fully
reflective, bump-mapped, pixel-shaded rivers and lakes. If you've
got the computage to run full-screen antialiasing to go with the
pixel shading, you're in for a visual treat you won't soon forget.
Add to this the fact that nothingnot one thingin
the game is a sprite, but rather every object, from the apples on
the tables to the blades of grass in the ground, is a 3D model,
and you'll appreciate it further.
I've heard from both friends and online communities that Morrowind
is not a game that will settle well for minimum requirements.
The minimums for Morrowind under Windows 98/ME are a 500
MHz processor and 128 megabytes of RAM; given the reports I've had
from the front lines, my recommendation is that you don't bother
if that's the best your computer can muster. I'm sorry for all those
Elder Scrolls fans who don't have the cash to burn on a $1,500
upgrade to their systems, but Morrowind demands the best
and appears to run pretty much as a slide show unless you can supply
the kind of power it needs. On the other hand, if you have the cash
and have been looking for a reason to upgrade, you're not going
to find a better one any time soon. Because though it's a harsh
taskmaster, Morrowind has all the ingredients to be a lasting
classic.
Elder Scrolls vets will discover a new floating menu interface
system that's going to take some getting used to. I didn't like
the Adobe Photoshop-inspired interface at first, but it has since
grown on me. Nonetheless I did prefer the layout and controls in
Daggerfall and would rather that some other interface options
had been made available. Robust key-mapping and joystick support
is available (the latter a layover from the Xbox port, no doubt),
and generally speaking the interface is crisp and easy to use. It's
just not as elegant as I'd have liked it to be. Otherwise, the game
is mechanically invisible, allowing us to focus entirely on play.
Scenic Vvardenfell on $20 a Day
As mentioned before, your character is a prisoner who has been
released from the Imperial dungeons and sent to Morrowind on the
direct orders of Emperor Uriel Septim VII of Tamriel. Bethesda has
asked that reviewers not describe the character generation process
in too much detail, so I won't describe it at all; suffice to say
that it's mechanically similar to the chargen process in Daggerfall,
and Elder Scrolls veterans will be on their way pretty
quickly.
Daggerfall, Morrowind's immediate predecessor in the Elder
Scrolls series, is in many ways the opposite of this newcomer
from a creative perspective. While both feature fiendishly complex
storylines that will keep gamers entranced, Daggerfall lays
out the plot and goals right from the beginning. Morrowind is
a giant question markyou're fed tidbits of the story and overall
arc of the game as you go along. Frankly I find that somewhat off-putting,
if for no other reason than it gives you as a character no real
motivation to follow the storyline. You can feel free to do exactly
that if you just want to play but have no real interest in finishing
the game, but the nebulous aspect of Morrowind's overall
story can mean a lot of note-taking and hard memory work in order
to piece it all together. This is an issue of personal taste and
not a judgment call, but I, for one, prefer RPGs that lay out at
least the basic skeleton of a story before setting you free in a
vast alien landscape. In Morrowind, you start knowing nothing.
And Morrowind, like its predecessors before it, is vast
indeed. A full-color, 19" × 21" map of Vvardenfell
understates the immensity of the world through which you will travel.
This island is enormous, the cities within it are equally huge,
and the sprawling underworld adds yet another level of exploratory
joy for those spelunkers who get a thrill from spending time underground.
Bethesda learned harsh lessons from Daggerfall, though,
and they're not the type of studio that repeats mistakes (they make
new ones). Gone is the randomly generated over- and underworld of
Daggerfall. Gone are the catacombs that were so impossibly
huge you could literally spend months of game time lost in them.
In Morrowind, the world is colossal, yesbut it's tight
and logical. Dungeons have a clear beginning, middle, and end, even
if some of them are enormous. The automap feature is tremendously
improved. Outdoor travel won't leave you feeling like you're wandering
in an empty wildernessVvardenfell sports a nice set of roads,
and some conscientious Island Planner stuck plenty of signs in the
ground so you'll always have an idea of where you're going. This
is especially nice since the "quick travel" feature that
both Arena and Daggerfall depended on has been removed.
Though you can choose to travel magically or book transport in other
ways, thrifty players will probably walk from place to place. Such
a thing was simply unheard of in Morrowind's predecessors.
The problem with walking is that it's slow. Your actual walk rate
is determined by your speed attribute; the higher it is, the faster
you move when you're walking. Most players will run a great deal,
not only to cover distances in a shorter period of time but also
to improve their athletics score. Running, however, causes fatigue,
and the more exhausted you are, the harder it is to be successful
in combat. So what all this boils down to is that it's a pity you
can't buy a horse in this game. That feature was available in Daggerfall,
though there were plenty of problems with it. Given modern technology
and game physics, I think going horseback would have been much more
realistic in Morrowind, and I'm bitterly disappointed that
you don't have the option to do itbecause walking is slow
enough that it gets damned annoying.
Aside from the fact that it's occasionally slow, world travel in
Morrowind is no problem at all. The graphics are such a treat
that I found myself stopping to admire a sunrise over water more
than once (the day and night cycles in Morrowind rival even
the beauty of sunrises and sunsets in Black & White).
Terrifying thunderstorms and other inclement weather keep you on
your toes, and since the entire world is handmade, you will certainly
feel like you're traveling through a real place, not one that was
randomly generated by a game engine. The game stops to load sections
now and then, resulting in a pause of a few seconds here and there
(think Half Life), but the load times are short enough on
a fast system that they're not particularly jarring.
A problem I've never once experienced myself but have heard complaints
about are terrain and texture clipping. Several gamers have complained
that they get stuck on objects in the landscape and cannot move.
This is serious, and it had better be fixed in the patch if it's
as big a deal as some players say that it is. I, for one, have never
gotten stuck on anythingbut I'm one player and I've heard
this complaint a lot. So be sure to save the game often and stay
away from cramped spots if you think you might have trouble.
Moving from interiors to exteriors also means a short load timeagain,
short enough that it's inconsequential. It's almost like you're
switching engines during this loading, however, as interior worlds
are encapsulated and unaffected by events outside. You cannot, for
example, see what's going on outside through a window; the engine
shuts down the outside world as soon as you move inside, and vice
versa. A more significant complaint about this system is the manner
in which you can and cannot enter buildingsspecifically, doors
are the only way in. Since an entire group of character classes
are focused on breaking and entering, a few additional options of
entrance and egress would have been nice. Also, though Morrowind
is already immersive in the extreme, I find myself wistfully
picturing what it would be like to hear thunder rumble outside while
I browsed the shelves at a bookstore or to watch the city guard
on night patrol from my hotel room window.
Also removed from Morrowind is the ability to climb sheer
surfaces. It worked so badly in Daggerfall that I can imagine
why designers chose not to bother with it, but it would have been
a nice feature. You can't even "mantle" up onto a low
surface like a table, either, which means that Acrobats will feel
foolish sometimes when they discover that they can't clamber up
onto a waist-high ledge. It also leads to problems when you're in
the water and having a hard time getting out. Back in Daggerfall,
your ability to climb onto things was dependent on your acrobatics
skill, and though the skill remains, it is sadly emasculated in
Morrowind.
Everything you do is based on skills. Each character class sports
major and minor skills appropriate to that class, and all the other
skills are in the miscellaneous group. Naturally enough, skills
improve as you use them, so it behooves you to use them often. In
a paradigm pioneered by the Elder Scrolls, there are no "experience
points" in Morrowindyou go up levels when you
have improved any combination of major and minor skills by ten points.
Based on the skills you've used, you are then granted points you
can add to their governing attributes. It's a wonderful system,
and improved over Daggerfall's, when it was easy to cook
up a custom-made character that went up levels constantly simply
because the major and minor skills in that class were used all the
time.
Additionally, other logical improvements have been made. If you
are highly trained in the use of light armor, you can expect to
get better protection from it than from even the most solid heavy
armors. If you're trained in unarmed fighting, you're going to do
more damage with your fists than with a claymore. I love this improvement
and applaud the decision to set the game up in this manner. In fact
the only complaint I have is that "medium" armor is unusually
hard to find, so you'd be better off specializing in light, heavy,
or unarmored skill. If designers are going to implement a system
like this, the system must be fully balanced. On the plus side,
however, it's easier to enchant your own items, and there are now
magical and special items of all kinds lying aroundback in
Daggerfall, it was a nightmare for an expert in, say, the
spear to find a cool enchanted spear.
"Go Away" and Other Useful Phrases in Dunmeric
Morrowind NPCs are largely not voice actedyou'll get
a vocal cue when someone acknowledges your presence or when an important
NPC has something to sayand for the most part that's just
fine with me. A clickable conversation tree, much improved over
Daggerfall's, allows you to query NPCs about specific and
general topics, barter for services, and note their general opinion
of you. While the world may be handcrafted, the NPCs are, for the
most part, notpeople say the exact same thing nine times out
of ten. Ask everyone in town about local rumors, for example, and
you'll receive an identical paragraph each time. This is somewhat
jarring, but also understandable considering how many people there
are in each of the towns you'll visit; the mudhole that is Seyda
Neen, the village where the game begins, sports at least twenty
speaking roles and is one of the smallest towns in the game.
Most people are unfriendly until you do something to change their
opinion. Strangers are unwelcome in Morrowind and they're not going
to make an exception for you. A number of options exist to improve
individuals' opinions of you, from threats to compliments to cash
to magical solutions. More than once I was quite impressed by the
depth and strength of the game logic; it's a truly persistent world,
where actions you take are remembered and affect the rest of the
game. If you're hired to discreetly liberate a key from a rich man's
pocket, for example, but instead you simply kill the man and take
his key, expect the person who hired you to know and be upset about
it. You'd never have found such a thing in Daggerfallhowever
you chose to return the key would have been fine with your employer.
On the subject of crime, it's handled similarly to Daggerfall
and also to real life: you're not going to get arrested unless
someone sees you doing something wrong and reports you. Normally
this is fine, as it encourages thieves and cutthroats to be subtle
in their approach to the craft, but there are bugs in the system,
often couched inside wise decisions that were poorly thought out
or implemented: you cannot, for example, steal an object from a
shopkeeper and sell it right back to the same shopkeeper. That makes
sense. However, the system isn't smart enough to catalogue exactly
what you stole. If you take a diamond from an alchemist's shop,
then come back weeks later with an entirely different diamondeven
one you didn't stealand try to sell it to her, you're going
to get arrested. That's annoying since you need to keep track of
what you've stolen, and from whom. It's especially annoying when
you get nailed for selling legitimately acquired property that matches
an item stolen earlier.
Further, if you're stopped for any crimeeven if you're exoneratedthe
city guard will take away any stolen property on your person. Some
sort of limit needs to be put on this, since thieves make their
living by stealing. I myself was wearing stolen armor, lifted so
long ago I'd completely forgotten it was stolen, when I was stopped
for a murder in a town far away from the one where I'd gotten my
armor. After presenting a signed release that indicated my actions
to be legal, the guard let me go, but I found myself in my underwear.
This infuriated me, because it was cool armor that I later found
to be nearly irreplaceable; the shopkeeper and guards had not seen
me stealing it; and I'd had many dealings with the victimized armorer
since the theft and never been accused. The minute you're accused
of any crime, any stolen property on your person is irrevocably
lost, regardless of the circumstances. I hope the Patching Monkeys
at Bethesda plan to fix this problemeither guards should be
interested only in the criminal activities for which they stop you,
or they shouldn't take ill-gotten objects that were stolen in another
town, or they shouldn't take items that were stolen but which no
one saw you steal, or they should ignore items that were stolen
more than, say, a month ago.
If you're stopped by guards you can choose to pay a fine, resist
arrest, or go to the slammer. Daggerfall vets may think that
jail's not so bad, but they'd be wrongsavvy Daggerfallers
could do whatever they wanted, spend years in jail, and go on
as though nothing had happened. If you spend time in prison in Morrowind,
however, your skills decrease, and that can be disastrous. It's
excellent that they set it up this way, since there should be a
penalty for getting caught being a bad boy. Sadly, the "plead
your case" feature of law enforcement that we found in Daggerfall
is gone here; city guards see to everything right there on the
street. I did find it amusing, however, that cold-blooded murder
will net you a whopping ten days in the pokeytalk about lenient
judges.
As you talk to people and experience things, the story of Morrowind
will begin to unfold. Like any in-depth RPG, it's going to be
overwhelming at first. There are a lot of names and places to remember,
a lot of things to carry around, and a lot to do before you can
even think about nearing the end of this epic adventure. Luckily
Morrowind promises to remain so exciting and eventful that
I doubt many players will drift away before they finish the game.
Even better, the included Elder Scrolls Construction Kit allows
fans to create downloadable plug-in modules that can be added to
the experience.
Today's Forecast: Rain, Fog, and Scattered Political Intrigue
Vvardenfell is a bleak place, as the screen captures on the right
will attest. I normally like a splash of color here and there, which
you're not going to find in Morrowind, but here it all fits
into the mood that the designers of the game worked so hard to evoke.
Giant bugs, skyscraper-sized mushrooms, grim and humorless peopleall
this fits right in with the constant rain and fog, the Swamps of
Sadness landscape, and the general feeling of loneliness and despair
that pervades the game. Your character isn't there to have fun,
after all; no one in his/her right mind would go to Morrowind to
have fun anyway.
Instead, you're there to get caught up in a centuries-old resistance
plot against the Occupation, a grass-roots effort to restore the
practice of necromancy in the Morrowind heartland, the (literal)
resurrection of an ancient and extinct noble house, and even grimmer
events. No one has ever faulted Bethesda for its creativity, and
Morrowind lives up to expectations, producing a political
drama of staggering proportions. Mix The Manchurian Candidate
with Night of the Living Dead and a little Lord of
the Rings and you'll have an idea of the flavor this game will
leave with you.
Guild and political affiliations are back with a vengeance in Morrowind.
In addition to the Fighters, Thieves, and Mages guilds, your
character will have the opportunity to join up with one of the three
noble houses of Morrowind, along with various imperial factions,
local assassins' guilds, criminal syndicates, drug smugglers, temples
of the Dunmeric and Imperial variety, and more. The seedy underworld
of Vvardenfell island is so great that you may wonder whether there
are any law-abiding citizens at all. Everyone is in on something,
and as you form your own affiliations and enmities, people on the
island will either gravitate toward you, treat you neutrally, or
view you as a despised foe.
Bethesda claims more than 400 unique quests pepper the game. It
felt like I'd done a lot more than that, and all are interesting
and well-conceived. You will find the occasional "Deliver Object
A to Person B" FedEx quests, but for the most part your assignments
are complex and exciting. Even better, there are usually several
ways to succeed. If you're sent to shake down an antiquities dealer
for some valuable Dwarven artifacts, for example, you could follow
the letter of the quest, or rob the store, or loot some Dwarven
ruins yourself, or hire someone else to do it, or any number of
other possible alternatives. For the first time we're beginning
to see games with the kind of technology required to support multiple
creative solutions to problems. Bethesda has once again taken a
grand leap forward as it blurs the line between computer and tabletop
roleplaying. Playing Morrowind is still not like sitting
at a table with a GM, but it's a big step closer.
Things to Do in Vvardenfell When You're Dead
Though it's a character- and story-focused roleplaying game, you'll
find plenty of action in Morrowind to satisfy your bloodlust.
Daggerfall, you may remember, was a game that Senator Lieberman
once attacked as the "electronic equivalent of coal in the
stocking" for its violence and grim themes; Morrowind is,
if anything, more gritty and dark than its predecessor.
The bestiary of Vvardenfell fits in with the overall clime of the
placethere are plenty of repulsive insects and slime-dribbling
creepy crawlies that occupy the sometimes marshy, sometimes dust-choked
geography of the island. Combat is real time and works almost exactly
like the earlier Elder Scrolls titleshold a button
and move the mouse, then release. The direction you moved determines
how you operate the weapon (slash, stab, etc.). You can also choose
to always use that weapon's most potent attack (a bash with a hammer,
for example, is more devastating than a poke), in which case combat
becomes kind of a clickfest. However, since your perspective moves
when you move the mouse to swing (very stupid mistake, Bethesda),
most gamers are going to elect to always use the most powerful attack.
It's incredibly annoying to click, slide the mouse to the left to
"slash," and find yourself turning even as you execute
the move.
I'd like to have seen a few more creatures roaming the island;
I don't have an official count but suspect that the actual fauna
of Vvardenfell (not including humanoids) is limited to about thirty
species. Though slim, the available monsters have been well thought-out
indeedhorrifying beasts such as Clannfear and Hunger are creatures
straight out of nightmare. Even the clanking, steam-powered living
relics of the Dwarven era light fire in the imagination and further
impress upon a gamer how much work went into evoking the world of
Morrowind before a single line of code was written.
But the really dangerous creatures in Vvardenfell are those that
walk on two legs and have brains as smart as your own. The ruthless
Camonna Tong, a criminal syndicate devoted to the expulsion of the
Imperials, and Yang to their Yin, the brutal Imperial Legion, intent
on crushing the opposition forces in Morrowind, represent only two
of the sinister factions of bloodthirsty gangs you'll encounter
during your travels. Rabble ranging from thieves and cutthroats
to high-class white collar criminals, false messiahs, and wicked
religious zealots vie for power and attention in a realm where logic
is turned on its ear and out of control xenophobia is the rule rather
than the exception. In a land where the insane are in the majority,
the sane find themselves very lonely indeed.
The infernal Daedroth lords also reappear in this Elder Scrolls
sequel. The foul Daedra, the demons of Tamrielic myth, are much
more fully fleshed out and explored in this chapter of the series.
Vvardenfell's religion is based on worship of living gods who themselves
are tangible manifestations of Daedric concepts. A religious war
as well as a political one is brewing in poor Vvardenfell, and as
you might imagine, your ignorant character is going to get caught
up right in the middle of it.
Who Are You, and What Have You Done with Bethesda Softworks?
Mechanically, the game is more than sound. We've already discussed
the beautiful graphics, which screenshots simply cannot do justiceMorrowind
has to be seen to be believed. The sound is equally compelling,
with rich orchestrations and powerful effects rattling your subwoofer.
Though you don't need a set of Klipsch speakers or an Audigy to
appreciate the aural glory of Morrowind, they can't hurt.
The nicest thing about the game, though, is that it brings a lot
more to the table than eye and ear candy.
One thing it doesn't bring to the table is serious instability
or bugginess. Considering the hell that gamers went through with
Daggerfall (see the retrospective for details on that misery),
I was shocked at how stable Morrowind really is. It's not
boxed perfection, of course; the game has some minor bugsthe
clipping and logic problems, occasional crashes out to Windows,
etc.but for the most part it's incredibly stable. Unlike many
games on shelves today, Morrowind was ready to ship when
it went gold. That's not to say that it wouldn't benefit from a
patch, but the title shipped unbroken, which is a rare treat nowadays
and practically unimaginable for Bethesda.
I'm sure a patch is in the works, but so far there's no word on
what it will do or when we can expect it. I assume Bethesda is smart
enough to make sure that it won't mess with saved games. I think
we can probably expect a general performance and compatibility patch
within the next two weeks. If you've had a significantly different
experience with the stability of Morrowind, I'd like to hear
about it either at the Henhouse or at steerpike@fourfatchicks.com.
And while Morrowind is a little less sprawling than Daggerfall
was, you can certainly take your time and do whatever you like.
The last CRPG I played in great depth was Wizardry 8, and
comparing the two I realize how generous the Elder Scrolls games
really are with self-determination. You can choose to follow the
story or not, you can choose to be a good or bad guy, you can get
turned into a vampire, you can sell drugs or hunt undead, you can
be nice or mean; your adventures will be of your own determination,
not the game's.
Fifth Time's the Charm
I rambled in the retrospective about the true definition of nonlinearity.
The fact is game studios have successfully convinced too many gamers
to accept something less than the best when they seek out that quality.
The ability to simply accomplish goals out of order should not be
seen as the end all and be all of nonlinear gameplay. A nonlinear
game is one of absolute freedom, where only logical bounds and the
imagination of the gamer should be restrictions. Since 1993 Bethesda
Softworks has committed itself to producing a true nonlinear roleplaying
experience: a game with a story you can choose to follow or ignore,
a world so persistent and believable that whenever you visit it,
you'll have no problem believing that such a place could really
exist.
The point of roleplaying is to invite us to unlock the potential
of our own imaginations. Tabletop roleplaying allows greater flexibility
for both the player and the GM because the human brain is infinitely
more qualified to allow for and to create a "nonlinear"
gaming experience. Computer programs, limited as they are to their
zeroes and ones, may never be powerful enough to grant us the same
freedom. But I for one have always been interested in seeing how
close developers can come, because computer games can fill gaps
that tabletop games never havejust like going to the movies
is different than hearing a tale passed along in the oral tradition.
In the case of Morrowind, Bethesda has finally achieved what
it tried and tried to do with the other four Elder Scrolls games.
Here we have the ultimate Goldilocks comparison in gaming: Arena
didn't have the technology. Daggerfall had too much of
everything. Battlespire lacked too many qualities that serious
gamers would look for. Redguard focused too much on exploring
other genres. But Morrowind ... Morrowind is just right.
The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind completely and totally redeems
Bethesda for its past inadequacies. It is one thing to identify
mistakes in earlier products and fix them; it's quite another to
repair all the mistakes and also provide an experience that is both
creatively and technologically miles ahead of anything else available,
and a quantum leap beyond its own immediate predecessor. My thrill
with this game should be apparent in the fact that the complaints
I have about it focus mostly on very minor play issues; there is
nothing, not one thing, in Morrowind that comes close to
being a deal-breaker.
It is a beautiful, exciting, rich, and well-written game. It is
everything that a great CRPG hopes to be. I certainly hope that
other gamers are enjoying it as much as I am, because we've suffered
through a long RPG dry spell where titles that hit the shelves brought
very little creativity or newness to the table. Now at last we have
something to tide us over. And since every game of Morrowind
will be fundamentally different depending on the path you choose
to take through the story, gamers who finish Morrowind will
probably turn around and start right over again as thieves. Or knights.
Or witch hunters. Or battlemages. Or bards. Or pilgrims. Or sorcerers.
Or alchemists. Or barbarians. Or monks. Or ... 
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The Verdict
The Lowdown
Developer: Bethesda
Publisher: Bethesda
Release Date: April 2002
Available for: 
Four Fat Chicks Links
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System Requirements
Recommended:
Pentium III/4, 1 GHz
256 MB RAM
64 MB video + pixel shaders
Where to Find It
Links provided for informational purposes only.
FFC makes no warranty with regard to any transaction entered into
by any party(ies).
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