Morrowind Review

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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Review by SteerpikeMay 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 CRPGs—it 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 base—though 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 Elves—the “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 insane—Bethesda 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 only—GeForce 3 and 4 (but not GeForce 4 MX), Radeon 7500 and 8500, and the upcoming offerings from Matrox and Creative—that 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 nothing—not one thing—in 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 mark—you’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, yes—but 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 wilderness—Vvardenfell 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 it—because 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 anything—but 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 time—again, 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 buildings—specifically, 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 Morrowind—you 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 around—back 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 acted—you’ll get a vocal cue when someone acknowledges your presence or when an important NPC has something to say—and 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, not—people 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 Daggerfall—however 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 diamond—even one you didn’t steal—and 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 crime—even if you’re exonerated—the 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 problem—either 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 wrong—savvy 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 pokey—talk 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 people—all 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 place—there 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 titles—hold 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 indeed—horrifying 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 justice—Morrowind 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 bugs—the 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 have—just 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 … The End

The Verdict

The Lowdown

Developer: Bethesda Publisher: Bethesda Release Date: April 2002

Available for: Windows Xbox

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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).

      Copyright © Electric Eye Productions.  All rights reserved.  No reproduction in whole or in part without express written permission.

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29 Responses to The Long, Sordid Tail of DRM

  • Meho

    Good one.

    Of course, it will be very interesting to see the battle between crackers and UBI’s cryptographers. PC version of Assassin’s Creed II is already circulating the warez scene, although as yet uncracked. Everybody seems to think it will be cracked in a couple of weeks time at worst, which, admittedly is better for UBI than what usually happens (games cracked before release). Of course, I won’t be buying it because I find this practice unnacceptable (and I do have the console version anyway) but the success of this game and its DRM might mean quite a lot in the future. Of course, we ARE moving towards the age where you will be required to be connected to do any playing at all, whatwith the Gaikai and OnLive systems rearing their heads on the horizon. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, eh?

  • Spike

    I went to the Ubisoft website and looked at their list of published games.  It seems that the last of their games I played was the last Myst game in 2005.  In fact the only Ubisoft games I’ve played have been Myst games.  So I don’t see that their new DRM crime-against-my-privacy will have much of an effect on me.  But I hate the idea.  It’s an “Off with their heads!” kind of development.  Reminds me of the idea that people will put up with lost privacy in exchange for security.  In this case the security is only to benefit Ubisoft.  Yes, I allow my privacy to be violated every day – each time I visit Amazon, or read Google News -the list goes on and on.  BUT THOSE ARE MY CHOICES.  I also have a choice about where and how I spend my money, and I’d refrain from buying a game that allows so much intrusion into my computer/life.  A game that tells me how I must live my life even in the smallest of ways such as always being connected to the internet is a game I can forgo.

  • Jason O

    Consoles CAN be connected to the internet 100% of the time, but there are still many consoles that never go online. Modern Warfare 2 sold over 11 million copies, yet XBox Live only shows 840,000 users that have been on-line with it. That’s not played online, that means they played the game in any mode while connected to XBox Live.

    Games that have required an internet connection and were multiplayer only have a history of vanishing quickly from the console marketplace. Phantasy Star ONLINE did much better on the Gamecube then it did on the XBox. What was the difference? Oh yeah, you could play PSO without an internet connection on the Gamecube, the XBox version require a live account and an internet connection. That’s hardly the only example but one that is near and dear to my heart.

  • Bennet

    No, no, you don’t get it! Ubisoft’s “always connected” requirement isn’t DRM, it’s value-add for you, the beloved customer. Just like the Albertsons supermarket chain requires employees to plaster obnoxiously bright orange “Thank you for shopping with us!” stickers on your Coke and milk not because they think you’re stealing them but to express their sincere gratitude for your patronage.

    Maybe my memories of a time when consumers paid for a product and got the product, unadorned by FBI warnings and impossible to open wrappings and authentication servers that can vanish at any time without warning were planted by aliens. In the current cultural climate it’s certainly difficult to believe that time ever existed.

  • Meho

    But Steerpike makes a good point: business model, retail model is lagging behind the times. And developers, instead of researching ways to use the existing systems to sell more games rather research new ways to piss off their paying customers.

    Seriously, in my opinion, pirates pirate games because they are better value than retail games. Not just in the sense that they get to spend less money on them, but they get them faster, do not have to go through any hassle with DRM and have full control over the game. I think that Gabe Newell put it best saying that Valve sees pirates as customers who haven’t been served yet.

    I think UBI and their ilk should look for ways to make retail games more valuable to their customers than (free) warez copies. Yes, stuff like achievements/ trophies helps a little, sure. There are other ways too and one of them is resale value. But, oh, what a surprise, used games market pisses publishers off MORE than pirates do. In fact most of the current DRM schemes are only effective against resales. EA’s ten dollar project and all other free DLC on day one initiatives. So, honestly, I’m afraid that UBI’s online-all-the-time-or-no-service DRM is basically only going to affect sales of used games. The crackers are going to bring their games to pirates eventually. I believe that draconic DRM schemes such as this will only inspire people like GeoHot, Dark Alex and Yoshihiro to spend more of their time on circumvention. Their street cred is going to be huge after all…

    What Valve seem to understand is that playing games through Steam should make playing MORE valuable/ comfortable than not playing games through Steam (which is, at the end of the day a DRM system). Being able to instal a game on as many machines as you want and not having to have a disc in the drive is exactly what pirated games give us too, but with Steam you also retain all your stats, friends lists, achievements and everything. So it’s BETTER than playing pirated games. I only hope that UBI wake up and realise they have to ADD value, not just subtract freedoms.

  • Lewis B

    I’m not really sure I see their DRM as a huge problem.  If my PC is turned on, so is my internet.  I’m fully aware that my name is probably on a million data bases already, and although it might be annoying knowing that Ubisoft have implemented such a security feature, if you don’t physically notice it, I don’t particularly care.

    I’m currently playing Myst at the moment, having never before.  What an odd game…

  • Meho

    Well, you know, just from a philosophical standpoint: if the game is unplayable as soon as you don’t have Internet connection (which, I’m afraid, happens to me more regularly than I am comfortable with) for no other reason than making sure you have paid for it then to me this is pretty much unnacceptable. Requiring a connection for something that is a function of the game itself is OK, but enforcing it just for the sake of protection of the publisher, sorry, no sale.

  • Lewis B

    True Meho.  I had 40 minutes the other day before I went out and thought I would have a quick skirmish on Dawn of War II.  Steam (despite my love for it) wouldn’t launch the game because for some reason it kept freezing and refusing to connect or launch in offline mode.  I couldn’t actually locate the source directory either to boot the game up manually. So, I didn’t get to play and instead spent 40 minutes in a fit of rage cursing Valve and all who work under them. 

    Not exactly the same situation, but not hugely dissimilar.

  • Gregg B

    I’m really not concerned about the privacy issue simply because that illusion is just that, and doesn’t really comfort or unsettle me. My problem with this whole thing is that internet connections can be temperamental at the best of times and the idea that if the connection falters I will lose my progress (and thus my invested time which I’d argue is more valuable than my money) then quite frankly Ubi can fuck off. I’ve been pretty placid up to press with DRM simply because it’s not seemed that intrusive but this will affect the paying customers more than the pirates. It devalues the product and I fear it will push otherwise paying customers to download cracked versions that don’t suffer from this shit. Which, of course, will play into Ubi’s hands.

    Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.

    “I wonder if we’ll ever get to a point where a person would be just as likely to invest in a beloved classic as a hot new release.”

    From my experience there are a lot of people who simply can’t stomach old looking games, even some of my friends who’ve been playing games since they were young have turned into total graphics whores. Seriously you want to see the totally underwhelmed look on their faces when I show them XCOM for any period of time. We’re at a stage now where graphics are so advanced that for a lot of people going back so far to sample an allegedly classic title is simply too much. Thankfully GOG is doing a fantastic job of making these titles as accessible, and valuable, as possible.

    EDIT: Spot on Meho. My point exactly.
    See what I mean though Lew? Time. Valuable stuff. A quick skirmish on DoW turned into a 40 minute skirmish with Steam.

  • Mat

    This seems like an awful idea.. or at least one which sounds like a good idea to somebody somewhere, but in reality is unworkable.

    Since I’ve been a paying internet customer I have lived at 3 different addresses and used around 5 different ISP’s. I have ALWAYS had problems with my internet connection. With my current set up it tends to go down if a menacing looking cloud passes overhead..

  • xtal

    Some people may like to play a game offline now and then; this is especially easy with older ones before the dawn of activation codes and online authentication. While those aren’t that annoying, having to maintain a constant internet connection just to play a game that you paid for, which is not specifically a MMO, really bites.

    Gregg B said:
    “Am I right in believing all this stems from the hideous retail model that just refuses to die? Physical retail creates pressuring deadlines, costs considerably more due to increased physical production (and overheads in staffing and floor space), it’s inflexible with stock limitations and shelf space dictating the range of titles available in any given store and by the sounds of things is the sole reason for this ‘tail’. If you look at Steam, it isn’t always the newest games that sell the most due in no small part to their sales and weekend deals.”

    I agree with this. Just a few years ago I couldn’t see myself paying for intangible, digital goods. Fast forward to now and it’s really my preferred method of computer gaming, whether it’s GOG, Steam, or elsewhere, I find it’s the model that works best for the customer. If I’m not mistaken, I believe once upon a time that was who the industry was trying to serve, no? The customer?

  • Cesar

    You know, I’m from Brazil and there piracy is HUGE. Maybe for that reason I feel for the industry and understand the efforts to stop it. However, I suspect this crack delay would have a very minor impact in markets like Brazil. People can’t afford the games, so they wouldn’t pay full price anyway.

    It is a shame that we don’t have privacy anymore. The other day a friend of mine on XBox Live sent me a message to congratulate me on a goal I scored in Fifa 10. I didn’t know but apparently not only you can see I’m playing Fifa, but you also see when I score and my avatar cheers! While that sounds very cool, it is also very disturbing. But like Matt points very well, privacy is already gone. And since I don’t have it anymore, why not help stop piracy?

    On the other hand, the plurality of solutions is a different matter, it becomes a hassle. I think the solution should be platform dependent, not publisher dependent. In Brew phones, the control is embedded in the system and you cannot use an app if it cannot be verified, which means if you are not connected to the network you can’t play.

    Unfortunately that cannot be applied to consoles, there’s a considerable number of devices outside the internet umbrella. But if the game constantly checks if you are online and tries to authenticate the copy, online piracy will suffer a big hit and the technological move towards full connectivity will make the practice more and more efficient over time.

  • Andrew

    Not going to buy the game, long tail or not, it sucks to have that kind of persistent connection needed for offline play. Not even just startup authorisation either. I must admit any Game For Windows Live games can be similar (Dawn of War 2 being one of them necessitating it) although most of them allow offline profiles, and most of them allow the saves to be moved easily between any online or offline accounts.

    Oh, and if you’re disconnected it won’t kick you out of the game too, even Microsoft didn’t get that wrong.

    I don’t even understand how privacy comes into it, my main issue is twofold:
    – The above note about simple, offline play (and disconnects for blips in service)
    – The fact it isn’t just your connection that is necessary, it is THEIR connection and servers

    The second point as a partial game historian leads me to wonder how many years (not decades) the servers will be there. Publishers have removed much more necessary servers quickly if they are a cost liability (or they want to push people onto a newer game…). Downtime is also, considering some of the services require payment (Xbox Live for instance) devastatingly poor considering the user base sizes, especially on high load days (and I wonder if we’ll see “Assassins Creed 2 unplayable at launch due to server overload” at all, heh). Lucky it’s “just games” though, no worries if we only have 99% uptime right?! 😉

    (Also, frankly their Assassins Creed 1 port was poor until they patched it, where at least then it was playable (in full on 16:9…for some reason), which makes me wary of any PC release of a console game they do. I wonder also if they still have unskippable cutscenes, I’ve not checked it out on the consoles).

    The fact they’ll never have enough sales of this PC version due to the earlier console release to either say this is a roaring success or roaring failure. It’s the longest end of the tail in the first place. Or they’ll lie about whatever happens anyway. It’s utterly bizarre…I just don’t understand it.

  • Meho

    Cesar: I’m in Serbia and here piracy reigns supreme (much worse than Brazil, I imagine) but still, this is pure and simple bullshit. I purcahsed BioShock 2 today, for my PS3 even though I’d prefer to play it on my PC just because of the stupid DRM that won’t let me control the use of a game I pay for. They can fuck off with that. So, my purchase was influenced by DRM, depsite the game being more natural to play on a PC. Protection measures should not create this kind of bitterness in a human being.

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    The issue of server overload on release days is significant. Think about it – a game like Modern Warfare 2? Or any other hotly anticipated release? Of course the servers would go down. It’s not cost-effective to install a server infrastructure capable of handling Day Zero traffic. That would royally piss people off.

    Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.

    Around the holidays here, big stores like Best Buy station a guy at the exit. His job is to go through your bag and consult your receipt to make sure you haven’t stolen anything. That’s a very similar ideology to this one: treat all consumers like thieves in hopes of catching the few who are.

  • Lewis B

    Considering most MMOG servers cannot cope on launch day, I see it as a gaurentee that when the next Modern Warfare is released, if they do follow through with this, would see many unhappy players.

  • lakerz1

    This new DRM policy will totally be screwing me over because I have a wireless internet setup, but my signal is a bit weak so here and there it drops out for a 10-15 second period before it reconnects.  Plus my wireless router is a bit wonky and will just stop working once in awhile until I cycle power to it.  So, until my setup changes, I will be forced to avoid all Ubi PC games that use this.

  • Igor Hardy

    I seriously doubt a person which would normally pirate a game, will pay money for it just because she has to wait a short while longer for the cracked version. This can work only for very cheap games – like 1$ cheap.

  • Meho

    Just for those keeping tabs: the Russian version of Assassin’s Creed II has apparently been successfully cracked, with a fix for the saves too. Of course, I don’t KNOW this for sure but that’s the word circulating through the grapewine.

  • Cesar

    Brazil is a strong competitor in the piracy rates. 95%-97% if I am not mistaken.

    Anyway, I don’t have a problem with the privacy issue. Not even with the assumption that we are all thieves. If you extrapolate that idea, you will conclude we shouldn’t have patrol cars on the streets. They assume people will commit crimes and have to keep watch. Homo homini lupus. Society isn’t perfect and even though losses are part of the model, no one is ready to lose out of good faith alone. I don’t mean to say DRM and police watch are the same thing, I’m just saying it’s not that simple to draw a line where it becomes offensive to monitor society.

    That being said, it is not acceptable to have a DRM impact gameplay at all. I don’t mind it authenticating my copy. But if I am offline it has to work. And if I loose connection during the game I shouldn’t be kicked out.

    And while the efficacy of the solution might be questionable under these circumstances, like I said in the previous comment, it only tends to increase.

  • Andrew

    “Ubi and others who use draconian DRM typically insist that if they ever go out of business or shut servers down, they’ll issue patches so the games can be played offline.”

    I have seen this happen to absolutely zero games ever. The fact that it is nearly impossible to sanction any work on IP if a company is in administration is the key. That and it is non-trivial to get around your own disk DRM by producing an installer that will work with your disk copy to install it.

    I’d love to be proved wrong…this is by far the most worrying thing of the deal, just installed Bioshock 2 and it has online activation (sigh)…worried I might need to download cracked versions to install it in the future!

    Oh, did you see the patch notes of the first patch? It makes the DRM very very very slightly “better” (I mean, better as in “still shit”):

    http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/17456/Assassin%27s+Creed+2+Patch+1.01+-+US

    “Game can now be continued from the exact same point when connection is restored”

    Ho ho ho. Ho.

  • Gregg B

    I like this bit:

    “Only those who purchased a copy of ACII or SHV legally appear to be affected. Pirates playing illegally downloaded cracked versions of the game are able to play without a problem.”

    Is it apparent pirates are having no problems yet? If they’ve properly cracked it then what I feared (above) is true. Last I heard was that the DRM apparently downloads levels or important files as you play. I don’t know whether this is true or not though.

  • Spike

    Meho beat me to it.  I just read a similar article on The Register.  I don’t suppose that the DDoS attack will make Ubi rethink its evil ways, but this might (I can dream, can’t I?):

    “Meanwhile Ubisoft’s much criticised controls have been broken by software hackers. A hacker group called Skid-Row managed to bypass DRM restrictions on Silent Hunter 5 less than 24 hours after the game was published. Skid Row has releasing a crack for the game based on this work, Zdnet reports. ®”

    Full article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/08/ubisoft_anti_drm_hack_attack/

  • Littermate

    Spike.  RE: The Register article
    There is a comment to that article that claims the crack for SH5 is not a complete crack and would only allow an incomplete experience, because not only are save games stored online but some of the game data files are stored online too, implying that the boxed game you buy is incomplete.  This seems plausible and effective IMO, because if I was demanding an internet connection for my software this is how I would do it.  It demands not only that a games code be cracked but that missing data files be supplied too.

  • Spike

    Having just read this article – link below – I’m thinking that DRM will be fine and dandy AND hunky-dory with me as long as the packaging it comes in is “green”.  Yep.  That makes it more palatable.

    http://www.fastcompany.com/1620105/ubisoft-green-recycled-case-digital-manual-sustainable-packaging

  • Matt "Steerpike" Sakey

    I would kind of like to buy games in potato cases.

  • xtal

    I was thinking… and remembered one of the most creative instances of “DRM” if you can call it that: King’s Quest VI! I looked it up and sure enough it is mentioned on KQVI’s Wikipedia page:

    A booklet titled “Guidebook to the Land of the Green Isles” (written by Jane Jensen) is included in the KQVI package. Aside from providing additional background to the game’s setting, this booklet serves as part of the game’s copy-protection. The player will not be able to pass the puzzles on the Cliffs of Logic that guard the Isle of the Sacred Mountain without information from the booklet. The booklet also includes a poem encoding the solution to one of the puzzles in the labyrinth on the Isle of the Sacred Mountain.

    I guess that’s not very feasible today, what with widespread use of the internet around the world. I still think it’s more creative than the “thank you for your money, we intend to treat you like a criminal” method.

  • Bluebogle

    I played the KQVI game with the booklet. I was a kid at the time, and thought the booklet was so cool! It really added to the whole game’s experience.

    The quest for Glory games came with fun booklets as well, though I don’t remember if they had copy protection elements to ’em.

    Ahh, the good old days..

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