Best in-depth RPG experience on Xbox
Alright, it's at least 2007 for you by now, someone says you should get Morrowind, and you're wondering - "Why should I get a 4-5 year old last-gen Xbox game?" Well, Morrowind is one of those rare games that will give you a lot of gameplay. And by "a lot of gameplay", I mean 300 hours plus, if you get into it.
Of course, not every game is for everyone. Some people might get easily bored within a few hours of playing this, and you might be one of those people. But any hardcore RPG-style game fan should play this through at least once in their life.
I'll start off with a big glaring con for the game. The graphics. For me, personally, I don't care a whole lot about graphics. Some people do. It adds more to the game experience, I'm sure. But don't write off Morrowind for not delivering too much in the visual department. Considering this, some landscapes are actually truly beautiful in the southern parts of the island the game takes place on, Vvardenfell. A lot of nice little graphical details work their way in here, like the sky moving in real (in-game) time (not our time - a day is about an hour in Morrowind). Of course, a lot of little details are missing, that would be nice - like, when you shoot an arrow into the water, if the water rippled - that sort of thing.
"Hold on, wait, back up - Vvardenfell? I thought we were in Morrowind." Yeah, that's confusing. Morrowind is the province in the Elder Scrolls world, and Vvardenfell is an island on it. And it's preeeetty big. You've got a huge island with differing landscapes, many detailed towns, mountains, plains, volcanoes, bodies of water...you could devote a whole year or two to trying to discover every little thing in this game. Of course, the best part of it is - you can explore everything, EVERYTHING. Nothing is off limits, there's nothing you're unable to get to.
"So what do you actually do?" Well, that could be an overwhelming question for a newcomer to the game. From the beginning, you can go almost everywhere. You're dropped off by a prison ship in a small seaside town along the swamps called Seyda Neen. You go through a small training sequence/character creation, and then you're on your own, given a quest from the get-go, which will lead you to find more quests and guilds to take and join. Of course, you're not totally on your own. You can access a map and a journal at any time, and you have your inventory, your spell list, and stats screen. And you're not on your own in the game, either. There's lots of people, and even more creatures around the island. You can use different methods to get their personal disposition towards you up, and make them more likely to talk to you about important subjects. (Or you can just bribe 'em.) All the people or at least humanoids in the game are made up of nine races. You get to choose who you are at the beginning. Thousands of people and only nine races? Sounds repetitive, but it isn't. Faces, hairstyle, and clothes offer variety, but what offers the greatest variety is personality. Some of the folks in this place are crazy. Some have some good lines. Some you'll hate and want to kill, some you'll love and smile at. Oh, and some you'll be weirded out by. Ever been hit on by a guy who doesn't care about your gender? Join House Hlaalu, you'll try out something new.
Of course, once you've got your bearings around the place, you can go to a guild and join it for a few easy quests to get some gold in your pocket. There's lots of options, around 15 guilds to join, and most of them have multiple places to recieve different quests from, and some even have equipment chests with some assorted goodies in them. There's anything from the sneaky Thieves Guild and the brave mercenaries of the Fighters Guild, to the soldiers and guards in the Imperial Legion and the politics involved with the three Great Houses. There's a bit of quest monotony, with a lot of earlier quests being "Go here, kill this guy, retrieve this item, rinse, repeat"ish. Plowing through those rewards with some truly cool and fun things to do as well, however, especially once you get into the quests from the two expansion packs included in the GotY edition.
"How does combat work?" Well. It's nothing spectacular, just the right trigger to attack. Oh wait! Just that would be boring. What comes to the rescue? Magic. Using any of the many effects in the game that you have found (around 40-50, divided into several different classes), you can create any spell (for a fee) using an aptly titled Spellmaker, usually found around the Mages' Guilds. You can also buy pre-made spells and such, and use potions and scrolls. Also using magic, you can enchant items - either to wear for constant protection, or enchanting a weapon with special effects that damage an opponent more using one of many Destruction spells, or just enchanting a ring or amulet to do something every time you use it. Magic has plenty of other uses, with different classes of spells like Conjuration, allowing you to summon your own personal army, Alchemy, to create potions, Restoration, to heal yourself and others, and many more.
"What else breaks up the monotony?" The sheer variety of weapons, clothing, and other assorted items there are in the game. Thousands, at the very least. Unique items give you plenty to discover.
"Should I get this Game of the Year (GotY) version or the original? The original's cheaper." Get GotY. Five more bucks gets you a lot of glitches fixed, some various upgrades, and the biggie - the two expansions (Bloodmoon and Tribunal) built in with nothing to activate or install or anything.
"Should I get this for PC or Xbox?" PC, if you can. With PC, you get patches and modifications easier. Mods are a very fun part of the game to use, things people have made that can range from adding another guild to a new creature or house or suit of armor. With the PC version, your possibilities are a lot more expanded than Xbox, unless you've got a modded 'box (don't void your warranty, people). The only problem with the PC version is yes, this game is immense, and you'll need a pretty nice PC. There's nothing wrong with the Xbox version if you're running an older or non-gaming-oriented system. Just so much right with the PC version.
"Should I get this at all?" Short answer yes, but it's not for everyone. If you like your games to be simple and short, and don't want to deal with longer loading times and the occasional frustrating glitch or freeze-up (though problems like this are fixed better with the PC version if you have a nice computer), you might want to pass up Morrowind and go for something like Fable or perhaps Jade Empire, for an Xbox RPG fix. Or, if you have a 360 or great PC, get Oblivion - it's a bit of a sized-down, spiffied-up Morrowind. And hey, if this isn't big ENOUGH - might want to look into Daggerfall, the second Elder Scrolls game. It's really big. But anyway, Morrowind's a great game if you want to have a deep, amazing, addicting, RPG experience taking up space in your disc drive for a few months or so.
