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.
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.
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 shit 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?
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?
I didn't
think so.
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?
Walk it out!
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?
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!
Cliff Racers . . . are the bane of this game. >: |
ReplyDeleteThere's even a bit of a joke about in the later games, as someone is actually sainted for driving the damn things out of Morrowind.
Did you happen to enjoy the later Elder Scrolls games, by chance?
A friend told me about the insane spawning rate that comes later. It's so bad people had to come up with mods to take it out.
DeleteI really enjoyed Skyrim. It almost feels like a response to the opening of this game. Morrowind starts out slow and didn't draw me in, Skyrim kicks off the story as early as possible and the world was just more engaging. I haven't gotten around to playing Oblivion yet.