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While hardly the first open-world game of its kind, the third numbered entry in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series cemented a formula and a set of expectations that are still alive and well today in games like Fallout 4 and The Witcher 3. It was an artistic and technical leap forward for mainstream role-playing games in the summer of 2002, and, for many, a beautiful and novel experience. A vast ashen landscape teeming with psychedelic flora and fauna — equal parts Jim Henson and George Lucas, with a dash of Tolkien — here was a game that resembled no other.
For the people who made it, Morrowind was the product of tough crunch, a pressure-cooker basement environment, and constant uncertainty about the company they worked for — which many felt could have shut down any day. But the island of Vvardenfell, and its unique pantheon of gods and demons, seemed to exist independent of the concerns upstairs.
Whatever the company's fate, it seemed the game was destined to find an audience. In the darkest of moments, when it seemed the writing was on the wall for Bethesda, project leader Todd Howard took the team to a nearby hotel for a private meeting. There, Howard rallied the developers' spirits, handed out personalized business cards, and assured them it would all work out, as long as they were willing to keep going.
That speech, one source says, probably saved the company.
Over the last year, we tracked down 10 former Morrowind team members, including Howard, concept artist Michael Kirkbride, and lead designer Ken Rolston. We discussed the very conception of Vvardenfell, the strangest bits of Elder Scrolls lore and the "shits-and-giggles" philosophy that informed them, and what it means to build a game world that withstands the test of time.
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @06:52PM (4 children)
Land of mushroom houses, kwamas and really distinct take on a "dark elf" race to the point this place doesn't really look much Tolkienian anymore. Very contrasting with other places in TES universe. There are good reasons to consider it the only entry in TES series that could be considered a cult classic. But the core gameplay didn't age well sadly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 28 2019, @07:05PM (3 children)
The core gameplay was extremely varied, even by today's standards.
NPCs wandered their area, with limitations. It supported multi-action attacks using a keyboard and mouse, with different styles of attacks causing different damage (and an option for 'novice mode' where it would automatically use the best attack). It had soul capture and soul stones used to infuse enchanted items with any metaspell you had knowledge of. It has a huge swath of spells possible. And it had the capability to charm/placate any npc to be favorable towards you, allowing quite a few extra possibilities including almost non-violent sandbox playthroughs. Most of the quest lines themselves required violence. I never checked if there was an available alternative path.
But the sheer breadth of non-main quest plotlines was impressive. You could become a vampire and turn back, you could do quests for minor gods. You could gather soulstones and enchant all the best equipment for yourself. It truly had a breadth most other mainstream games lacked at the time (there were other games as deep, but none in the 3d era at that point.)
Personally Cataclysm-DDA, while 2d, has replaced Morrowind as my go-to explorable RPG. It has even more variety and even more possibilities, but is also post-apocalytic instead of High Fantasy.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday March 28 2019, @07:45PM (1 child)
NPC wandering was greatly improved in Oblivion and Skyrim (Radiant AI). Now NPCs can sleep in their home, go to work on the other side of town, go shopping, sleep again, etc. Morrowind is kind of this eerie collection of people standing around in various locations, taking a few steps, looking around, sneezing, etc.
Melee attack was basically click to swing and that was it. This was improved in the later two games, although magic/archery are more fun IMO.
Some quest lines do have peaceful alternatives, and if you use Calm spells or pickpocketing, you can avoid killing even more NPCs. You would probably need to read the UESP wikia or a strategy guide to realize how to do that.
The enchanting, potionmaking, etc. was pretty broad in Morrowind and has since been toned down. But you still would have to essentially break the game (Fortify Intelligence) in order to reliably do constant effect enchantments that matched equipment you could find. And the spellmaking still came down to: Do you want to do X fire/cold/shock/etc. damage on target, touch, or self? And you could make the target blast up to 50 ft wide or whatever.
Efficient leveling sucks. You have to get your Endurance to 100 ASAP in order to get 10 health per level increase and carefully manage your skill increases and training every level. Probably requiring you to find some kind of cheaty source of gold in order to spend many thousands of it on training.
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(Score: 1) by Sulla on Thursday March 28 2019, @10:16PM
Morrowind had the best magic of the three. You can get close with some of the available mods in Skyrim but magic always felt lacking when vanilla.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by Webweasel on Friday March 29 2019, @10:09AM
Upvote for Cataclysm DDA, best game ever.
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