Christens Fair Shake

Re-Playability	5/5
Plot Design	5/5
World Design	5/5
Character Design	5/5
Graphic Design	3/5
Audio Design	5/5
Accessibility	2/5
Platform Compatibility	3/5
Developer Support	N/A
Community Vibe	5/5
Innovation in Genre	5/5

Introduction

The third entry in the mainline Elder Scrolls franchise, Morrowind introduces players to the mysterious and enchanting island of Vvardenfell, home of The Red Mountain and seat of Vivec. Located in the Inner Sea of the Sea of Ghosts, Vvardenfell plays host to The Heart of Lorkhan inside the bowels of the mountain and features cultural and natural diversity not seen elsewhere in all of Tamriel. Morrowind carries with it the soul of The Elder Scrolls franchise and all that makes it so unique and lasting in the minds of several generations of gamers. The world oozes creative genius not easily replicated by the likes of either The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion or The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The player takes on the role of a prisoner that is shipped to Vvardenfell via boat, arriving at the port village of Seyda Neen. The reigning Emperor of Tamriel, Uriel Septim VII has pardoned their sentence in exchange for becoming a spy working towards The Empire’s interests on Vvardenfell. While working with The Blademaster, Caius Cosades, the player stumbles upon a plot to overthrow The Tribunal Gods of Morrowind and The Empire. The player, with the blessings of the Daedric Prince Azura, mantles the Velothi Warlord Indoril Nerevar and in doing so, fulfills The Prophecy of The Incarnate. They challenge and defeat The Great Evil that dwells below Red Mountain, averting catastrophe and restoring The Good Daedra to their rightful place of worship across Morrowind.

Morrowind was the first truly three-dimensional (3D) role playing game (RPG) developed and published by Bethesda Softworks in North America and Ubisoft Entertainment in Europe. It was built using the NetImmerse game engine (now Gamebryo) licensed from NetImmerse (now Gamebase Co. Ltd.). Some fun facts about Morrowind include that:

• It was the last Elder Scrolls game to heavily involve Elder Scrolls lore expert Michael Kirkbride – he would later return to consult on Oblivion.
• It was the only Elder Scrolls game to feature an entirely hand-built over-world as well as dungeons, enemy placement, and loot placement – Oblivion and Skyrim saw a return to the procedural generation of Arena and Daggerfall.
• It was the first Elder Scrolls game to officially support mods built using the bundled Morrowind Construction Set.
• It was the first Elder Scrolls game to feature a dynamic weather system including rain, thunder, snow, and ash storms as well as a full day/night cycle.
• It features over 300 in-game books creating a literary depth not seen in any other Elder Scrolls title – Oblivion and Skyrim both reuse books from Morrowind while introducing a small collection of literary material of their own.
• It was the only Elder Scrolls game to feature levitation and teleportation spells as well as potion effects with integration into the main plot.
• It was Bethesda’s first title to launch on console, premiering on Xbox in 2002 and later re-released as the Game of the Year edition in 2003.

Review

Players embark on their journey in Morrowind in the port village of Seyda Neen not far from Vivec, the unofficial capital of Vvardenfell. Before Entering the Imperial Census and Excise office to fully realize their character, the player is first prompted, while on the docks, to select a race and sex, and to define the facial characteristics of their character. All standard Elder Scrolls races are available to select from, and unlike Skyrim where the uniqueness of these races are vastly trimmed down, each race has racial buffs and debuffs that can significantly alter game play and how a character is built. Once these options are confirmed, the player enters the Census and Excise office and greets Socucius Ergalla, where they are prompted to finalize the creation of their character by selecting from a pre-defined list of classes, modifying an existing class, or creating their own class. Players also pick a birthsign at this point, which yields further buffs and debuffs. Once the player picks up their release papers, they are prompted to confirm their character design, and in doing so, they commit themselves to their character for the rest of the game.

Morrowind offers the greatest clothing customization options out of any mainline entry in the Elder Scrolls franchise. Players may wear a full set of armor featuring boots, greaves, left and right pauldrons, left and right gauntlets, a chestpiece, and a helmet (note that Khajiit and Argonians can not wear either boots or hard-style helmets – soft helmets are OK). Additionally, players may don up to two rings, an earring, an amulet, and clothing under their armor as well as robes on top of their armor. All of these wearable items can be independently enchanted. Does this lead to broken builds or abuse of Morrowind’s clothing system? Sure. But Morrowind is a single-player game. The player sets the boundary for what they consider fair-play versus cheating or exploiting and it does not hurt any one else because it is just the player themselves inhabiting a world of mystery and intrique.

Similar to clothing, Morrowind also offers a vast arsenal of both weapons and spells to choose from. Uniquely, Morrowind also features throwing weapons such as kunai and ninja stars, not seen in any other mainline Elder Scrolls game. Spell-crafting is on full-display, allowing the character to create their own spells with custom effects, durations, and target types (ranged or touch). Unlike Oblivion and Skyrim, all spell effects can be replicated in potions, assuming they have been discovered with at least a single potion ingredient. Potion making is highly influenced by the quality of the players potion making tools as well as their own skill and just like with enchanting, it is possible to break the game with potion making. It is extremely feasible for the player to create potions worth 10s of thousands of Septims, allowing them to essentially fabricate infinite wealth as well as make potions that quite literally make the player invincible – but like Oblivion and Skyrim, this requires a spreadsheet to see what the most effective potion ingredients are.

There exists a number of factions in Morrowind including the Great Houses of Morrowind, the Imperial Mages, Fighters, and Thieves guilds, the Cammona Tong and Dark Brotherhood, the Imperial Legion and Imperial Cult, and the Temple. All of these factions have intricate and detailed quest-lines attached to them, though not all of them may be joined by the player, and in the case of the Great Houses, joining one precludes joining the others. Likewise, there comes a point where the player must choose between the Fighters and Thieves guilds should they be a member of both that will make them an enemy of the other. Lastly, there are a number of Daedric cults that can be found in the various Daedric ruins scattered around Vvardenfell, some of which have their own quests attached to them as well. There are of course other factions waiting in the wastes to be discovered that I do not mention here.

The player may earn ranks in each of the joinable factions by completing quests for the factions and advancing their story-lines. This opens up new sub-plots, perks, and benefits. Similar to Oblivion, but not Skyrim, factions have preferred attributes and skills that the player must meet to advance rank in that faction – failing to do so means advancement is stalled until the player meets these requirements. This creates a more authentic experience for the player and increases the re-playabilty of Morrowind over Skyrim, where the player may join and advance rank in all factions with no consequence to other factions or advancement requirements.

All of these systems combined yield the most comprehensive character creation and development system in all of the Elder Scrolls series. This allows characters to tell their own story as they progress through the game and carry out mainline quests, faction quests, and side quests. These facts make Morrowind the most replayable of all the mainline Elder Scrolls games leading to subsequent play-throughs where each is significantly different from the last. This is however marred by the age of the engine as well as its lack of accessibility for new players that did not grow up playing the game.

Vanilla (unmodded) Morrowind is not a game I would recommend anyone today play – unless of course, they played it when it first came out. The learning curve back-playing from Oblivion to Morrowind alone is gigantic. Morrowind was a game designed from the ground up to be played with keyboard and mouse and while it officially supports joystick (good luck finding a compatible one in 2024), it does not support controller on PC at all. Bear in mind the console release was on the original Xbox with the Duke controller – this controller is not compatible with PC due to the Xbox plug, and even if you use an adapter to make it work on PC, Windows 10 or 11 do not ship with drivers for the Duke. Using the Duke on Windows 10 and up requires the download and setup of aftermarket, third-party driver software. And after all is said and done, it can not be used to play Morrowind – the game engine just does not support controllers outside of Xbox.

Graphically, every face of every character in the game looks like someone took a potato straight out of the field, carved it up, glued some obviously fake hair on it, then painted it with variously colored sharpies. Characters are not pretty by any stretch of the imagination. animation is jerky, and clipping is prevalent across item and character models. Morrowind does carry with it unique armor and weapon designs that feel decidedly Nordic, Imperial, and Dunmer. The attention to detail on the equipment for its time is worth noting. The tile sets are also worth praising. Morrowind sets out from the onset to yield an otherworldly, almost alien vibe to the atmosphere of the games environment and it nails it.

Heavily drawing inspiration from the ancients including Egyptian, Indian, Persian, and Roman architecture, Morrowind masterfully accomplishes blending all of these influences together to create a unified yet disparate world with near seamless transitions. Ambient sound effects and music only highlight and complement this achievement. Playing Morrowind truly feels as if the player has been transported to a different realm, entirely disjoint from our own. It subverts expectations in all the correct ways, laying the groundwork that many, many future titles across the industry would build upon.

However, user interface design is where Morrowind fails to impress. Utilizing the same HUD that was refined for Oblivion; Health, Stamina, and Magicka are displayed in the lower left corner of the screen, while the map is displayed on the lower right corner of the screen. Active magickal effects display as icons below the mini-map that must be hovered over to see their effect and remaining duration, assuming they are not permanent. By default, the character, inventory, spell, and expanded map screens are opened by right-clicking the mouse. Game play is paused while this mode is active, and the player may resize and rearrange the individual windows at will.

The journal screen is accessed by pressing the “J” key by default. This opens an interactive notebook containing dated key events starting with the oldest events and ending with the newest. In the Game of the Year edition on PC, players may tab to the quest overview in the journal, select an appropriate quest, and see just the journal entries for that quest. No quest markers exist in Morrowind. All necessary directions are noted in conversation when quests are given to the player, and can be looked up in the journal. This, of course, means new players familiar with the quest markers from Oblivion or Skyrim will feel disoriented when playing Morrowind, and may even stop playing as they become lost navigating Vvardenfell.

Combat looks and feels clunky. Compared even to Oblivion, Morrowind combat is a slow and tedious grind from the onset of the game. Starting with the wrong weapons that the character is low-skill in ensures that nearly each attack will miss and this is actually a very common trap for new players not familiar with the mechanics of the game. In detail, almost every action in Morrowind such as whether a player successfully casts a spell or not, whether an attack or spell hits or misses, whether a lock is picked or a trap is disarmed, and much more is entirely roll-based (think DND) influenced by the characters skill with what they are attempting to do as well as the quality of the item they are using or the difficulty of the spell they are casting. This, in particular, comprises the core mechanics of what makes Morrowind feel dated. The partial removal of the dice mechanics in Oblivion and complete removal in Skyrim made the Elder Scrolls series a much more relaxed and enjoyable experience and its inclusion in Morrowind serves as a great detractor to new players, marring the experience and expectations that have been set by modern games for such players.

There is no “open map, and fast travel” feature in Morrowind. The only travel options available in the game are by Silt Strider, teleporting between Mages guildhalls, teleporting between Dunmer Strongholds using the propylon network, using spells or scrolls of Mark and Recall, using an enchanted item, or using a scroll of Almsivi or Divine intervention. While initially an inconvenience to the player, it is imperative to remember that all of Morrowind was hand-built. Travel by foot is the intended mechanism for traveling as this acts as a gate for harder content preventing the player from accidentally stumbling upon such content early. Most of these encounters, quests, etc… are usually out of the way and far from the Silt Strider or teleport systems requiring manual exploration to find. Staying on roads and traveling using Silt Striders or Mages guildhall teleportation ensures that the player remains mostly safe while allowing them to rapidly reach most major plot and sub plot points in the game.

I’ve spent a great deal of time interweaving the fine intricacies of Morrowind game play with details of the mechanics and how they fair today, but I’ve done little to talk about the plot… oh the plot. Carrying on the traditional grand fantasy scheming the series became known for in both Arena and Daggerfall, the player takes on the role of the fated Nerevarine. The true reincarnation of the ancient Velothi Warlord, Indoril Nerevar, namesake of House Indoril. In this role, the player while acting as a spy for The Blades, discovers a plot involving the long-time confidant of Nerevar, Voryn Dagoth (Dagoth Ur at the time of Morrowind). Seeking to overthrow whom he considers the betrayers of Nerevar, the False Gods of Morrowind, The Tribunal of Vivec, Sotha-Sil, and Almalexia. Leveraging the power of the Heart of Lorkhan beneath Red Mountain and taking advantage of the subsequent waning of The Tribunal, Dagoth Ur nearly carries out the realization of his grand scheme to blanket all of Morrowind in Corprus, transforming its people into hideously twisted Corprus Beasts that see him as their one true God – a scheme he would later carry out across all of Tamriel if the Nerevarine did not stop him.

This plot sees the character carried across the entire island of Vvardenfell, currying favor from the various Great Houses to be named the Hortator. Simultaneously, the player must also work towards being named the Nerevarine by all the major Ashlander tribes on the Island. Throughout their journey, the player slowly comes face to face with the enigmatic Sixth House of Dagoth Ur, confronting them at every possible avenue. The player even contracts Corprus, giving them a taste of what Dagoth Ur is putting the inhabitants and creatures of Vvardenfell through. The plot has political intrigue, devious machinations, conflicting tales of old, and much more, while still allowing the player to form their own opinions towards it and take their own actions to carry it out. Much of the plot is free-form, only requiring the player to carry out certain sub-plots in a prescribed order – the rest is left up to complete by the player in any order, and largely in any fashion, they choose.

Dagoth Ur accomplishes so much more as a villain in the series than either Mankor Camoran, Mehrunes Dagon, or Alduin. He has his own distinct personality, goals, and aspirations tied into his own view of the events of The Battle of Red Mountain that are entirely divorced from those of both The Tribunal and the Cult of the Incarnate. He carries these with him at all times, and the conviction of his own beliefs is readily professed in his conversations with the player – he truly believes what he is saying and truly believes what he is doing is the best course of action for Morrowind. He is the only villain in the entire mainline Elder Scrolls series that in my opinion has any sticking power as an actual substantial threat to all life on Nirn.

If I’m being honest, and this will be reflected in my Skyrim review, Alduin is generic, bland, and forgetful. His goal of being the end of the current kalpa and the destruction of Nirn is just boring. It’s bad writing and easily anticipated from the introduction of his character in Helgen when he unintentionally saves the Dragonborn. His final confrontation with the Dragonborn in Sovngarde is a weak protrayal of his character and a waste of his potential – he’s even killable in one-shot with Mehrunes Razor (what kind of threat is that??) Even if the Dragonborn should fall, there are no stakes involved aside from the eventual return of Alduin, which the game itself makes clear is at least several centuries if not an entire era. He just doesn’t have the same impact as Dagoth Ur and the very real, very present threat of the Blight, Corprus, and the Heart of Lorkhan.

Before I conclude, I also wanted to talk about OpenMW, the modern, open-source re-implementation of the NetImmerse engine available on Windows, Mac and Linux. OpenMW is a complete rewrite of the entire Morrowind engine. While still technically in beta, it is at this point almost entirely feature-complete and all of Morrowind and its expansions are entirely playable, requiring only the data packs from the original game. Most updates to the engine are in the form of bug fixes or new features intended to allow the engine to be used to develop and run other games in addition to Morrowind. The development team is highly communicative with the community and because the entire engine is open-source, anyone is welcome to contribute to it, open tickets on the projects bug tracker, and otherwise become involved with OpenMW.

Unlike vanilla Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim, the latter two of which utilize the in-house Papyrus scripting language, OpenMW scripts are all written entirely in the industry-standard Lua scripting language while the engine itself is written in C++ using industry-standard tooling such as OpenSceneGraph, the Bullet physics engine, and the OpenAL-Soft audio libraries. Modding is highly accessible with a vast amount of resources available to developers and mod authors on the official OpenMW forums, the official Discord server, and through many other channels. The OpenMW team is always looking for contributors, and the project itself is complex enough to serve as an excellent entry on a budding game developers portfolio – an industry in software development that outside of forming your own studio, is notoriously difficult to break into.

I know this seems as if I am shilling for people to work on the OpenMW project, but that’s because I want it to succeed. Morrowind played on top of it is more accessible, extensible, and stable than it has ever been before! If you are going to play Morrowind in 2024, it is worth it to play on OpenMW over the original implementation – especially since many of the mods and tools for the NetImmerse engine do not even run on modern operating systems without a great deal of finagling (also worth noting is that the Construction Kit is not available outside of the official install disc). Installing and playing Morrowind on OpenMW simply requires pointing the OpenMW launcher to your Morrowind install.

Conclusion

Morrowind is simply put, the best entry in the Elder Scrolls series. It has the best setting, the best plot, and the best villain out of all the mainline Elder Scrolls games. Players should use OpenMW instead of the vanilla engine to ensure maximum compatibility with all operating systems. Jank aside, I absolutely recommend everyone play Morrowind at least once.