Morrowind is an Open-World Fantasy RPG, the third entry in the mainline Elder Scrolls series. Popular and well received on release, going on to sell more than 4 million copies. Nowadays it is often seen as clunky and difficult to get into, but those who put in the work are rewarded with one of the best games of all time.
I love this game, but I didn’t always. Skyrim has been my favorite game since I first played it a decade ago, so of course I wanted to play the previous games in the series. But everything in Morrowind went against my natural instincts. Quests felt confusing, fog is everywhere, and despite being open world you are usually pushed to travel through narrow trenches. There are guards in the main city, who once offended, will NEVER forgive you. What ended up working for me was a full focus on the main quest. Once I’d defeated the evil powers of Dagoth I felt like Vvardenfell was truly mine.
I wouldn’t feel right making a post about TES 3 without mentioning the alienness of everything. Most other Elder Scrolls games are pretty close to the standard fantasy setting. Morrowind is not. Everything is bug or crab like, the palletes are dismal, and the people are strange and just as hostile as the environment. You really feel like you exploring a foreign land. Its something I hope they recapture in the next TES game (if it ever comes out)
What I love about Bethesda RPGs is that they are first person, and focused on completing well written quests. We are starting to see this genre take off, and some good prospects are releasing soon. But the selection is still limited. If you enjoy this style of gameplay its worth learning the jank to experience the wonder.
The weirdness was so perfect and that personality and flavor is completely lacking in Skyrim. There was so much more variety in items and the unique stuff was great. This really enriched the storytelling and made for a lot of memorable moments. One of my favorites is when you’re just walking through the world and an NPC just falls out of the sky, hits the ground, and dies. Then you loot his corpse, get his unique item of super jumping, and probably 99% of players immediately try it out, launch into the stratosphere, and splat like a tomato in exactly the same fashion. Or there were the unique boots that massively increased your running speed, but made you blind. Crafty players could leverage magic resistance to reduce the blinding effect and basically zoom around at superhuman speed with sunglasses on. Magic actually felt magical, compared to Skyrim where it amounts to little past being a source of damage. The system was designed to allow you freedom and find ways to surpass human abilities, and I think the world of the newer games is conversely designed to limit you as much as possible. No spellcrafting, extremely limited enchantments, few summoning options, no levitation, and the scaling system actually disincentivizes leveling. All the gear is essentially the same. It’s a tragedy.
Now if you N’wahs will excuse me I have some clouds to yell at.