After a
short post about safe spaces, what could possibly be more relevant than a
review of a video game? And not just any video game, but one which the 15th
anniversary is next year! Well, okay, with the upcoming release of the Special
Edition for Skyrim, I am sure those of us interested in the game will end up
discussing the merits of it compared to Morrowind. It happened with Oblivion
and it happened the first time Skyrim was released, and will likely happen with
every Elder Scroll release until the end of times. So let’s look at this mysterious
game from the early 2000s.
As with any
Elder Scrolls game, I am at a loss where to even begin pulling strings when attempting
to untangle the morbidly obese ball of yarn. Do I start with the story and see
where it goes or do I look at the good and bad? I think I just answered my own
question there, as the story and world-building is the good. And I rather end it on a low-note. So let’s begin with
the story.
Story
Now, if you
are one of those people who will be furious about getting a soon-to-be 15 year
old game spoiled for you, you should probably skip this part of the review. Don’t
worry, I will make a new heading when I begin to talk about the world-building.
Consider yourself spoiler-warned.
The basic
outline of the main story line in Morrowind is really quite simple. The Emperor
has an obsession with a prophecy involving the “Nerevarine”, an ancient Dunmer
hero reborn, and has scoured his prisons for someone sort-of matching the role.
You are one of these people, so you are sent to Vvardenfell, an island in
Morrowind, and you’re sort-of-but-not-really expected to try to fulfil this
prophecy. I say “not really” because, despite having his Imperial Legion and a
host of spies in most settlements, the Emperor never uses any of that to try to
force you, should you (as I usually do) simply ignore this request from the
most powerful man on the continent. Thinking back on it, I get this feeling
that he never actually expected you to be the Nerevarine and that he might have
been in a charitable mood and felt like pardoning someone.
In either
case, you have to learn you are the Nerevarine, then are not, then are again
before it is all over, all the while a mysterious man from the past of the
Tribunal Gods spreads his Divine Disease and the Sixth House Cult to the
corners of Vvardenfell. It is a long sightseeing tour of the island, where you
will meet a lot of Dunmer with opinions on you and what degree of fraud they
are dealing with. And it’s good.
The story
is on a pretty slow boil where most of the stuff goes to gathering information
for the Emperor’s local, elderly Spymaster and to pass the tests of the
Nerevarine for the three Great Houses and the four Ashlander tribes. As a
side-note here, they added a neat little detail for this (admittedly tedious on
the 3rd or 4th play through) part of the main questline. If
you are over level 20 and has 50 or higher Reputation, you get to skip the
tests. Because being a celebrity apparently means I get to just declare myself
the reincarnated Nerevar, no proof necessary.
After you
are the Nerevarine (for realsies this time, no takebacks or anything), you have
to gather some magical stuff so that you can sever the Main Baddie’s connection
to some other magical stuff. You talk to a god who is kinda responsible for why
the Main Baddie is so bad and go on to kill the guardians of the magical stuff
you need.
Those of
you following this will probably have had at least one voice in your head
shouting “This is a traditional Hero’s Journey in a pretentious haircut! What
can possibly be so good about that overused trope?” and the answer is pretty
damn simple.
The Pretentious Haircut
As you will
learn later in this review, I can’t stop myself from hating on most of the
stuff that is in this game, so why do I hundreds of hours on this game in the last
5 years alone, not to even try to figure out how many hours between 2002 and
now?
What
Morrowind does best is creating a world with scale and identity and nuance and
probably some other buzzwords that probably don’t mean what you think they mean.
Most quests, be they in the main story line or otherwise, tell you something
about how things are in Vvardenfell. You’ll learn who are friends and enemies,
how modern Imperial culture is mixing with the orthodox Dunmer culture, what
role the Temple and Great Houses play in the politics and any other thing you
could want to know.
Morrowind
is really where the Elder Scrolls series as most people know it began. Between
Daggerfall and Morrowind, the adventure game Redguard began to add changes to
the lore to make Tamriel more of its own thing, but it was first in Morrowind
we saw those changes expanded upon.
I know I am
going through this aspect of the game really quickly, but I think the
world-building is something one has to experience for oneself. Also, I have
stuff I want to complain about. But the main thing to take from this review is
that, for a lot of us, the world-building will forever excuse the faults
Morrowind has as a game. Yes, that was a TL;DR in the middle of the review.
Livin’ on the edge, yo! Do people even say “yo” anymore? Fuck…
Gameplay
Holy Blessings
of the Triune God of Man! By Hjalti, Zurin and Wulfharth, say it isn’t so!
Ten points
if you know who I am talking about above. But, seriously, the gameplay of
Morrowind has not exactly aged like fine wine. More like milk. And I wouldn’t
confidently say that it wasn’t past its expiration date when it came out on the
store shelves in the first place. Your movements are clunky, you get stuck on
seemingly everything and combat is a fucking chore. At the beginning of the
game you will probably think this is a difficult game, but it is just tricking
you. While starting off on a nice uphill struggle, you will soon wonder why it
was replaced with slave boys feeding you grapes. Magic, while offering a great
deal of spell variety, is clunky as fuck with its cast times and it will take
most of your magical energy if you want to kill anything larger than a rat.
Stealth is a joke and all three main playstyles has a point of no return, when
any challenge to be had has to be sought out in the DLC areas of Bloodmoon and
Tribunal, which constitute maybe 15% of the total game content.
Character stuff
So who is
the player? Whoever you want them to be. Within certain limits anyway. With 10
races, 2 genders (something for you SJWs to get your panties in a twist about,
I’m sure), 13 birthsigns, 21 predefined classes and the option to create your
own, there is a lot to choose from. Well, in theory anyway. Most classes with a
shared main focus will play largely the same and the classes do not offer
anything unique to your character. They just decide which skills start with
higher values and determine your level. You can still master any non-class
skill.
Between having
to upgrade three of your eight attributes every level, bonus points to them
depending on skills raised and the low max value compared to their starting
point, the “unique” stat distribution you start with will disappear pretty damn
quickly. There is also no variety for builds, unless you intentionally pick
suboptimal stats.
Strength
and endurance, with speed, agility, willpower or intelligence as a side
depending on your particular build, will always be the best for a warrior.
Willpower, intelligence etc. for a mage. Speed and agility for a rogue.
You might
argue “but what if I make a swordsman using speed and agility, eh?” Well, that
will probably work, if for no other reason than the general lack of difficulty
in the game, but ultimately you’re just playing an inferior version of a
strength and endurance swordsman. Attack speed is static and the dice-roll way
the combat works in isn’t good with melee based hit’n’run. So you’ll do less
damage and can take less of a beating. Nor does it actually change the way you
play the character. You either whack people… or whack people doing slightly less
damage.
Various
weapons have different damage stats depending on how you move when attacking,
but they are just damage stats. They are like more tedious, less interesting
versions of the “power attacks” that were added in Oblivion. A function you can
ignore by turning on the “always use best attack” feature in the options menu.
But even if you don’t, it’s easy to use the best attack anyway, if a bit
immersion breaking. I have to move forward to thrust? I am pretty sure the
human body is capable of performing a thrust standing still or moving sideways,
thank you very much.
The
birthsigns have some fun ideas, but are about as balanced as a hot pancake to
the face is subtle. Ranging from completely fucking you over (see the Lord) to fucking
everyone else over (see anything with an attribute bonus) to seemingly balanced
(warrior, mage and thief), they will probably have a decent effect on your
character. Unless you pick one of the balanced ones, since they fade into
obscurity pretty quickly.
The races
are about as balanced as the birthigns in this game, with Nord, Redguard and
Breton with their useful resistances and racial powers on top and High Elves
with their inclusive set of weaknesses on the bottom. Everything else is
somewhere else in between.
Exploration
This is
something Morrowind is, in my opinion, a mixed bag on. There are numerous
treasures and unique items to be found when exploring, be it caves or the
insides of wealthy people’s properties, but at the same time most of the caves
and such in the game are not unique. You are going to be very familiar with the
layout of caves, velothi towers, Dwemer ruins and Dunmer strongholds, even the
ones you never visited, before you are done with this game. It is not quite as
bad as Oblivion in this aspect, because there is quests and interesting loot to
find (at least in some of them), and there are some additional caves with
something unique about them, but mostly they are very similar in their layouts
and aesthetic.
The landscapes
you are exposed to outside of dungeoneering are much better (dated graphics
aside), and offer a nice variety of grasslands, ashlands, various settlements
with their own styles suited for their environments.
Guilds
Morrowind
has lots of Guilds and factions to join. Not quite as many as Daggerfall, but
far more than Oblivion and Skyrim. Does that automatically make the Guilds
better? Not really.
Something
that is important to keep in mind for anyone going back to Morrowind from
Oblivion and/or Skyrim, is that the factions do not focus on an overarching
story the same way as later games did. They are mostly unrelated quests hoarded
into a faction and given a coat of paint to belong there. And there is nothing
inherently wrong with this, as it is a nice way to flesh out the world a bit
and contextualize random quests. But they aren’t stories.
There is
one special mention though, the Fighters Guild. Probably my favorite faction
storyline in any TES game. Not my favorite storyline, but faction storyline. It
marries proper “guild work” (as opposed to the Mages Guild in Oblivion) with an
overarching plot that rewards those who pay attention to detail, while giving
the player agency in the story, as opposed to being a “yesman” at the whims of
the writers. What is the story about? Go play the damned questline and you’ll
see.
Honorable mentions
What else
is there to say? Spellcrafting? It works, but the spellsystem is so damn clunky
to use regardless. Infinite training per level? I don’t care either way about
this, to be honest, though it makes branching out of your “class” ridiculously easy.
Since, you know, money is not something you will run short on in Morrowind
after the first few levels.
Rating
Your TL;DR
is in another paragraph.
No comments:
Post a Comment