"I am a sleeper, one among thousands. I bring you a message. dagoth ur calls you, nerevarine, and you cannot deny your lord. the sixth house is risen, and dagoth is its glory"

despite the doom and gloom about oblivion, it's morrowind that serves as the elder scrolls' greatest anomaly: an inflection point that swerved the series away from faceless maximalism, monolithic breadth, and randomized content. developed during a period of fear and uncertainty about the future of the company, todd howard summed up the philosophy behind the risk taking succinctly: "what's the worst that's going to happen?"

a meticulously handcrafted world you could feasibly traverse in real time, a multitude of elaborate static questlines, lessened emphasis on level scaling, fast travel relegated solely to in-world means, rich itemization, an enhanced dialogue system, smaller dungeons that approximate real spaces... to say the changes were significant is an understatement. while established pillars like the character creation format and learn-by-doing skill system remained largely in tact, nearly everything else was reimagined or reworked to fit a game that was, among many things, more local. where bethesda once crafted abstract worlds, here they'd take on the challenge of designing, establishing, and allowing you to inhabit an actual place

nine regions spiral inward, each housing numerous geographies, cultures and settlements; each with drastically distinct architectures informed by them. the mushroom towers of the telvani, carapace huts of gnisis or ald-ruhn, stone and thatched roof settlements of the imperials, yurts of the ashlanders, and crooked daedric ruins being but a few. where previous — and to a lesser extent subsequent — entries in the series drew from a standard palette of european history and high fantasy, morrowind takes great efforts to distinguish itself as something uniquely alien, largely thanks to artist, writer, and designer michael kirkbride

fittingly, you're a stranger — a foreigner, outlander, n'wah — tasked with observing and navigating the region, its factions and religions, and the splinter groups and fractured politics within them. if you follow the narrative throughline you'll be expected to gather some body of knowledge, but most of it is offered in the way of extracurricular research and after hours inquisition

it's a congruent approach that allows for as much or as little engagement with the absurd amount of subsurface lore and worldbuilding as possible. if you choose to delve you'll get stories full of contradictions, unreliable narrators, historical records, mythological yarns, rituals, poems, lusty argonian maids, and a guy who learned to wear heavy armour so well he could walk on his hands and fuck his wife without removing it. if you choose not to you can stick to the more utile texts like the red book of 3E 426 or dismiss everything altogether. you can go the whole game without knowing what a dwemer is, but you're covered: some folks don't know shit

really, you don't have to know or do anything. once off the boat you'll amble forward all sluggish and dim and likely spend most of your time wandering aimlessly, learning elaborate public transit routes, memorizing directions, and getting lost in vivec. while there's urgency to the main quest, more often than not it'll be sending you far and wide to hobnob, get the lay of the land, and delve into tombs and caverns

and therein lies the brick wall that fells many an adventurer: the combat. in a contentious swerve morrowind is the only game in the series that binds the success of basic attacks to dice rolls. your blade may look like it's passing through one of the dozen cliff racers that've chased you from sheogorad to the ascadian isles, but the outcome is up to chance — and chance is working against you in the early hours. on its face it's a bad decision; it inarguably feels worse than any other game in the series, but that's ultimately why it proves to be the correct one

morrowind has something of a hyperbolic power curve. odds are if you're new to the game you might make a build where rats are lethal, walking up a slight incline requires you to take a break, and your understanding of your weapon is fundamentally unsound in a way that shouldn't be possible. you're basically the biggest loser to ever grace tamriel, and after you meet jiub, sign your paperwork, and get lost finding caius cosades you'll probably find yourself poisoned, paralyzed, or worse. the beauty in this is how it enables a heightened level of contrast

by the end of the game you'll be soaring over the ghostgate adorned in Exquisite Shirts and Pants that eliminate fall damage and fatigue, wielding custom swords that siphon enemy agility ("malder's gait"), and hosting a gilgameshian hoard of artifacts so valuable you'll have to sell them to a crab just to get half the money they're worth. you'll become a living cartoon on some who framed roger rabbit or space jam shit, and the juxtaposition couldn't possibly be more satisfying — all because of those shitty fuckin dice rolls

morrowind is a journey, one that's as much about murking bureaucrats, finding a smoking hot telvani wife, getting called slurs, contracting a thousand diseases, and severing the threads of prophecy as it is being ""Nerevarine"" or anything else. for all its little flaws and idiosyncrasies it continues to creep up the list of my favourite games, and hell, I guess I love it

in the end after a hard fought victory I ended up back where I started: in caius cosades house, now stacked knee high with books, glass armours, boots of flying, sixth house trinkets, and a fire hazard's worth of odds and ends. in honour of my good friend the spymaster I decided to relax, hit the Good Skooma Pipe (Quality: 0.15), and get some rest...

I sure hope nothing weird happens with The Tribunal haha!!!

blows insane plume

Two decades later in the world of Skyrim, and eventually, The Elder Scrolls VI, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is still a game worth playing. As the series' first foray into 3D, you will certainly feel its age. As soon as you deal with the graphics (whether through mods or through self discipline), and figure out exactly how combat rolls work, you will be thrown into a vibrant, almost alien world with nothing but the name of some bald dude in a distant city. That's it, get out there; you are immediately handed access to a world filled with interesting quests, guilds, dungeons, exploration, and treasures. In classic The Elder Scrolls fashion, your main storyline involves saving the known world from certain doom, and of the three post 2000 TES games, it has a strong argument for being the best in the series.

If you've only played Skyrim, and to a lesser extent, Oblivion, Morrowind will certainly be a learning experience for you, even as a fan of the series. If you're willing to bear with the ancient systems that run the gameplay, you will find the game to be a unique glimpse into the world of The Elder Scrolls that will reward your creativity and curiosity.

I give this a 2 because I know this game is revolutionary on early 00s and not just game of its time. But this game is unplayable playing it today. Obviously outdated compared to current Bethesda titles mainly Starfield. This is the great game to shatter hardcore Bethesda fans their nostalgia about old school RPGs, especially traversing. I only played this game for less than a hour but thats enough to make a review.

After complicated character creation, excel sheet text based chat without audio option, awkward controls, slow walking speed without sprint option, and convoluted menu I finally go off to traverse the open world. Without mini map and no quest markers I rely myself on hints and clues like road signs just to go through my first quest line. Its the worst experience I played in a Elder Scrolls game more than Daggerfall. At least in Daggerfall the game tells me right away that game isnt for me. So I didnt waste almost a hour of my time playing that game to know its very outdated.

The combat also didnt changed from Daggerfall. Most of my swings misses. My character almost die to only one worm and one rat. After several minutes of slow walking I finally found the town of my first quest. Without quest markers though I have to find the quest line by talking to NPCs around town and hint on my character journal. After long minutes wander aimlessly I quit the game to rest myself. Surprisingly the game have no autosaves and checkpoint saves. My progress gone once I go back to it because I didnt manual save often. Thats the time I quit and moved on

So I began my quest to play Western RPGs with Daggerfall and I kinda enjoyed it. The game had charm but a boring loop that didn't hold me long. Hearing how much Morrowind was an improvement, I was eager to try it.

I've given it a chance and all of the flaws that were in Daggerfall were in this.

-I hate the combat and the RNG
-I hate talking to characters only to be greeted with walls of dialogue.
-I hate how slow the game is.

I hope later Bethesda games impress me. Until then, Morrowind and Daggerfall just aren't my thing.