Mood:  not sure

I think I had mentioned earlier that I'd bought Morrowind, the third installment of the Elder Scrolls series, not too long ago. Now, Morrowind's about 5 years old at this point -- ancient in computer years -- and its sequel Oblivion's already been out and expanded (which I have not played). I have heard from die-hard Elder Scrolls fans that Morrowind is better than Oblivion anyway.

Keeping in mind the game is 5 years old, the game is very ambitious. It boasts a vast world and a lot of control over your own actions, and in general succeeds on this, especially the "vast world" part. But... again, yes, keeping in mind this game is not brand new... I have trouble seeing what the hubbub was about in lauding it as one of the greatest RPGs of all time and all that.

Not to look down on the creators too much. The game is huge. It takes place on a whole continent which pretty much you can travel all over by foot and investigate every nook and cranny. The game has a story to it, but makes no efforts to railroad you into any kind of story -- it's the very antithesis of the RPG type game especially seen from Japan for consoles, where the game is more or less a slightly tiresome activity you engage in between animated cutscenes. If you want a story in Morrowind, you have to make it happen. And if you don't... you'll find plenty to do and not even notice the uberplot at all. You can help ladies find their roguish lovers and join assassins' guilds and go on holy pilgrimages, all of which have their own intrigue and depth. And the character improvement system is really based on actual growth -- you engage successfully in one activity a lot, and that skill goes up. Makes sense.

The problem though, is that all that's great about the game is also what is enormously frustrating about it. It's too ambitous and too huge at times.... you end up doing a lot of wandering around, and the ability to explore everywhere is as much a curse as it is a blessing. Sure, you might find the secret entrance to the ancient assassins' guild headquarters. But you may as likely find yourself wandering down long twisty passages or a grey landscape fighting with rats and giant insecty things and never getting anything for your literal hours of trouble but maybe a chunk of meat and a glass bottle.   

Generally Morrowind seems to be the sum of the concept of "Great idea, poor realization." Being able to go everywhere and interact with every object seems cool, until you realize ultimately, every citizen's house is going to be filled with the same random NPC who utters the same information as every other random NPC, and will have the same collection of useless knives, forks, and plates. You know what I realized from Morrowind? I realized I don't need to know the contents of every single house in a city, nor be able to take them. It's not particularly fun nor interesting. When I realize that there was probably some poor area designer who sat down and put in the same plates, bowls, and cutlery into every single abode, I feel very very sorry for him.... and very frustrated that time and dedication hadn't been put into something else, like scripting more unique dialogue for important characters, or tweaking the character leveling system to be less "munchkin-encouraging."

Yes, the "organic" character leveling system needs work. The basic concept -- pick some core skills, practice with them, and improve -- works well and makes sense. The problem is.... when you gain a number of skillpoints from practice, you "level up." Leveling up allows you to raise your basic abilities (strength, agility, etc.) which in turn will allow better skill use later. Where it gets stupidly complicated is that the more skills you raise, the better ability score raise you get. This encourages you to NOT level up until you've raised your skill scores a lot. Except that you only level up on resting... which is also the most efficient way to heal yourself and regain your magical energy ... so I find myself running around with no mana and half damaged because I don't want crappy ability score raises. It's especially annoying because there seem to be few mana-restoring potions in the game. Oy.

And potions. Oy again. You can make your own..... if you have the patience to gather the eight trillion potion ingredients that exist in the world and want to carry them around with you (oh yes, and there are encumbrance rules in play. Joy.) until you find the right combination you need to make the potion.... and you will never have the right ingredients for the potion you actually want, usually, unless you are ridiculously obsessive about collecting ingredients and have nothing else in your pack.

They decided to make shopkeepers "realistic" too.... in that they have a limited and usually frustratingly small amount of gold, meaning it's difficult to sell your loot in any one place. And I wouldn't care about this... except you need massive amounts of goals to purchase skill training to help you raise your skills faster so you can actually finally rest to get your mana back. There is one -- ONE -- shopkeeper in the whole game who has a neverending high max of gold to sell stuff to, and he isn't always easy to get to depending on where you are. Joy.

The game also generally has a "cold" feel to it... it may be "immersive" in the sense of its explorable world, but the many NPCs are all completely colorless... there is no scripted dialogue for you to speak -- you just pick "keywords" and the NPC responds with information on the subject. 90% of the NPCs have the *exact same* information on a given keyword, and after you pick up a number of keywords, it becomes a chore trying to pick out the one useful or unique subject someone might supply something new one. And since mostly everyone says the same thing, it's difficult to get a sense of any individual personalities. There is some effort put into for some characters, but it's diminished by the fact that even these characters have a few of the "stock" answers for certain keywords, written in an entirely different "voice" than the conversation options clearly written just for them. Also, while you do have full choice to take or not take on certain tasks and can be somewhat creative in your resolutions, there are some specific quests which are bizarrely "railroaded", often infact in part through poor or no sensible dialogue options.

Finally, the graphics are technically brilliant in the sense that it's a full 3D world that allows for excellent movement -- flying even (no restrictive walkmeshes *glares at NWN2*) and with fairly decent animations for its time. But the color palette is absolutely and completely drab... everything seems to be the same shade of grey... and there is very little variation done in character or architecture design (with a few notable exceptions). And when a game is selling itself on its "fully explorable" world, that world should actually look like an interesting place to explore.

But maybe what's the most frustrating thing about Morrowind is..... that it's totally addictive, regardless of all its flaws. It's certainly nowhere near the top of my list as "the greatest RPGs" but it still offers compelling gameplay and backstory; it still offers areas the explorer in me needs to discover. So I'll have to begrudgingly forgive *some* of Morrowind's sources of frustration... but while I'll definitely try to play through it some more, I doubt I'll be trying Oblivion unless someone points out to me where they've notably improved in these areas.