Hallo und herzlich willkommen ToriJ: Videospiele Bewertungen. Tori here, and today to cap off Thanksgaming Month we're looking at what many fans consider as the best Elder Scrolls game of all time, Morrowind! It's actually not that windy in Morrowind. Kinda disappointed.
The game kicks off with you as a prisoner. You know, I'm starting to notice a pattern developing here. Only, instead of nearly being beheaded and having to contest with a fire breathing dragon, you just walk off a boat and deliver papers to some guy. They say you're a free man (even when you choose to play as a woman), but you're actually not because right after delivering those papers you have to deliver a message to another guy over in Balmora, and then you have to follow his orders. Or spend three-hundred hours just doing side-quests. Whatever you feel like.
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Who's looking at you, kid?
While you're inside the boat you get to decide on your name, once on the docks you get to edit your character's appearance, race, etc., and after that you get to decide your class in three different ways. From there, you can explore the wonderful world of Morrowind, which is actually quite beautiful for a game that came out in 2002. Here's the bad news, YOU HAVE TO READ! May not be bad if you already read a lot, but if you're used to voice acting doing all the work for you, you're going to be in for a bad time.
I know it's not intentional, but the game kind of leads you into a false sense of security like they're going to talk the whole time, and then BAM! Text. Just text, text, and more text. Kind of like what you're reading right now. You, person who's skimming this post because you're too lazy to read it all, don't play Morrowind. The people you encounter may have a line or two to say in greeting, and that's it. They'll even talk when you don't want them to. You'll just be passing by, and a guy will go “Today's your lucky day!” Stay away from me! I don't want what you're selling, just leave me alone.
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What do you mean my unarmed skill increased? I have a sword!
When exploring the world of Morrowind, you must always remain on your guard and mind your surroundings, and for no reason, look up to watch out for flying beasts. We call them Cliff Racers. You can't see it right now because it's above me, but that's what happening. I'm being attacked by one. I didn't even know how I was losing health until I looked up. Turns out all those people who never look up in the movies do exist in real life. I'm one of them.
To make matters worse, the sword wasn't doing jack moon turds against this thing. I didn't know what the run button was, so I was trying to hop away from the monster, and then I died. It's shift by the way. Holding down shift helps you run, it also decreases your stamina which is the little green bar you see in the picture above. That goes down when performing stronger attacks, running, and jumping. I did enough jumping to make up a Mario game. Good way to get your acrobatic skill up, though. In Morrowind, anything can happen. A man can even fall from the sky. Like so:
ON HIS FEET! Do you have any idea how much that would hurt? Your legs would just smash in! What was he doing anyway?
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Moral of the story: Never take “I believe I may have found the correct formula” as an acceptable result when dealing with magic. Do you mind if I take your clothes?
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I didn't think so.
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For me? Oh, you shouldn't have.
I like that no matter how insufficient an item may be, you can just take it. Bottles, cups, food, candles, if it's laying around somewhere, all you have to do is go up to it and snatch it. Provided there's no one around to stop you. “Good evening, officer. I was just admiring this fine bottle of... empty.”
They speak a lot about the natives not warming up to you straight away, but even when they're not fond of you at the start I don't feel like they want me to go away. They're easily approachable and always willing to offer you advice and give you information. They sure do treat foreigners nicer than some countries I know. Are we sure this place isn't Canada?
Like a lot of Bethesda RPGs, you have your option of third-person and first-person perspective at the push of a button. This should be a really cool feature to have in a game, but sadly one perspective always wins out over the other. The Elder Scrolls are very much meant to be played from a first-person perspective. While it's cool to actually see your character, the game just doesn't play as well from that angle than when you have it on the default setting.
When it all comes down to it, the game is just boring! You'd be running around the open-world, perhaps run into one or two people on the road, a couple of monsters here and there to kill, and it's exhausting. I was already tired of the game from just traveling to the first city. At least the Elder Scroll games provides a realistic sense of travel, because if you walked that much distance you would be worn out by the time you got to the city. Where's the inn at?
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I'm alone with a guy who has no shirt, with a bed nearby. Awkward...
If you like Morrowind, keep on liking it. Let's face it nothing I say is going to change your mind anyway. If you're on the fence about Morrowind, you really need to think if any of the things I mentioned would be a turn off for you. The Elder Scrolls offer a very different role-playing experience from games made by companies like Square Enix, and BioWare, which isn't a bad thing. It's good to have variety, and for that reason I'm still thankful this game exists. If you didn't like Morrowind, don't feel bad. You're not alone.
Try it
This concludes Thanksgaming Month! Thanks for joining me in this trip through time, and I hope to see you all next month when I review games you most likely never heard of. Happy Thanksgiving! People still celebrate Thanksgiving in December, right?
