The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

The Elder Scrolls III

Morrowind

R E V I E W

The epic video game series The Elder Scrolls stepped into a new level with its third entry: Morrowind. Morrowind was the first Elder Scrolls game to be released on a platform other than PC; it was released on PC and Xbox. Both versions have their advantages and disadvantages. The PC version may lag, freeze up, or randomly close, but you may add mods, which is a HUGE advantage. The Xbox version doesn’t lag, may occasionally freeze, (but nearly all games do), and will not randomly close, BUT there is no way of adding mods, and if you want the expansion packs, you must buy the Game of the Year edition.

G A M E P L A Y --- The Elder Scrolls have been the defining game of the WRPG category since the first game in the series: Arena. With its gigantic maps, fantastic gameplay, basically everything you want in a game is in the Elder Scrolls. Let’s talk about Morrowind though. Now I know, it’s 2013 and we have Oblivion and Skyrim, but Morrowind really was the game-changer in the series. The gameplay is just amazing. The game lets you make decisions just like real life. If you want to steal something, you can. You might get caught, but it’s your choice. You can lie to someone, or tell the truth. You can help someone or not, join the guilds that you want, pretty much make every decision you want to. The First-Person view perspective, which The Elder Scrolls series is vastly known for, had a great interface; plain and simple. The HUD shows you the Weapon you have equipped, Magic equipped, Health bar, Stamina bar, EXP bar, and Enemy Health bar when fighting. When you fight, you can’t perform combos or anything insanely cool, but this is like real life. You wouldn’t perform a back flip, sword chop in real life now would you? You can get better weapons that have more damage points, special abilities, enchantments, and so on and so forth. There are probably over 50 different potions. That’s a lot of potions! I won’t ruin all of the surprise, but some more items there are in the game are: Armor, Books, Keys, Knives, Food, and useless items! The graphics aren’t anything too special, but they aren’t horrible either. The music is really well composed and designed. The characters don’t verbally speak very much…most of what they say is written text, like in most RPG’s. If you strictly follow the main story, you will probably be able to beat the game in about 20 hours. But the side-quests add literally Hundreds of hours of gameplay, and believe me, some of them you wont want to miss!

Morrowind has two expansion packs, Bloodmoon and Tribunal, which both add plenty of hours of play, new weapons, characters, enemies, and more. If you get the Game of the Year edition, these expansion packs are included. The Bloodmoon expansion pack adds the Bloodmoon islands to the game, which are 1/5 the size of the main Morrowind map. There are many different quests and a main story to this expansion, which will keep you busy for many, many hours. Bloodmoon introduces a few different enemies, like Bears, Berserkers, Wolves, and Werewolves. One of the best features of the Bloodmoon expansion pack is that you can actually become a Werewolf!

The Tribunal expansion adds the capital city of Mournhold, Soltha Sil. This expansion is PACKED with new quests. You can do all sorts of things in the Tribunal expansion, like be a bouncer, hunt orcs in a sewer, or even perform in a play!

O F F E N S I V E  M A T E R I A L --- There is a bit of offensive material in Morrowind. First off, there is a lot of violence. The game almost revolves around it. Magic is used very frequently and magical references like enchantments and potions are required to proceed in the game. You may avoid a lot of this magic though, by choosing a non magic fluent class, such as a barbarian. There are a few curse words used in Morrowind. D*** and h*** are used a few times, but more frequently heard in the Tribunal expansion. A** was used twice, and B****rd was used about three times. As mentioned before, you can steal, lie, and murder in the game. There is also a Thieves Guild, which requires all three of these to be done in some quests, and most all quests involve murder. There are a few references to liquor, and drugs in the game as well. The materials Skooma, and Moon Sugar are referred to as addictive and illegal drugs. One quest involves trying to cure one persons Skooma addiction, in another you find a man’s Skooma Pipe, which he smoked Skooma from. But most merchants will not trade with you if you have these materials in your inventory. You may ingest Skooma and Moon Sugar, It increases your speed and agility, but decreases your intelligence and willpower. You may take all the clothes off your player, but they have permanent undergarments, unless a mod is used. There is a building in Suran called “The House of Earthy Delights” which is a building where all women are in their underwear and 3 of them are dancing. When you talk to them they say something to the effect of “Looking for a good time?” but the only thing you can reply is “Goodbye”. Luckily, this building is totally avoidable and only holds one quest within it, which could have easily been placed in another tavern. In my opinion, the building was only made to please the perverts that play the game. Morrowind is also Very addictive, so be careful, and keep an eye on the clock while playing, because you can easily clock in a 5 hour session.

O V E R A L L --- Overall I give Morrowind a B+ on the JMRS because of its offensive material. Although not much for the size of the game, most is unnecessary. I recommend this game to ages 15+, because of the material in the game, and the very, very complex story and gameplay system. Morrowind is a great game that every RPG fan should play. You can find it rather cheep now too! I got my GOTY Edition for $15 for PC, all discs and case included, or you can also download it from GameStop for $20 For Xbox it will be about $25-30 but well worth it! The game holds well over 300 hours of gameplay! Your best bet for getting the game would be the Game of the Year edition, since if you buy the expansions separately, it will end up costing you more than the GOTY. Plus the GOTY edition includes better features, like the quest system.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (PC, Xbox)

Wanna Buy It?  Amazon  Ebay  Gamestop

Epic mods!