water! I love that my fancy 3DFX cards show where the water actually moves as you move through it. Very fancy. Overall, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a whole new experience for me playing at the start of the new millennium. My English is not as good as I am after six years, majoring in this subject, so it’s hard for me to keep up. However, the world is amazing and I love the odd Fwaldenfel Isle. I eventually managed to get through the long story and enjoyed most of the game, though the mechanics were hard to grasp and the graphics were a little lacking even at the time. Today, it’s still considered one of Bethesda’s absolute classics and will always hold a special place in my heart. But the question remains what it’s like to start today if you’ve never played it before.
For the sake of transparency, let me just say that I’ve played Morrowind with a lot of mods, and I do this to make it more accessible, which the Bethesda game tends to lack in the original. This is how I recommend others approach Morrowind as well.
The story of Morrowind is not so easy to understand for a modern game. There’s a lot of reading in the dialogue menu that doesn’t quite make sense. It’s as opaque as it was then. There are a couple of mods that fix this, but I still find the system to be very difficult to manage, and it still hinders my positive experience with the game. There are fan-made mods in the game, which I’m really looking forward to, since the dialogue has a lot more voice over than the original, which will make the game easier to pick up.
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If you dig through the many dialogs, there’s a fascinating story beneath the surface. You play as an unknown prisoner who arrives in the city of Sedanion, where you are told to contact Caius Cossades after the Emperor released you on suspicion of being the legendary Nerevari. He is in Barromora, a great city south of Morrowind. He then proceeds to tell you about the evil Dagos about you and his plan to infect the island with Coprus disease. There’s a lot more to this story, and it’s the best of the five Elder Scrolls games in my opinion. It’s mysterious, exciting, and you really feel like something important is at stake. The story is as exciting now as it was then, and even if it’s rather difficult to navigate, it’s worth the effort, just like it was in the early ’00s. In addition to the main story, the game also has two very large expansions, The Court and Blood Moon, so if you want to experience storytelling at the best of Bethesda, there’s plenty to get your hands on.
However, the biggest strength of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, like all Bethesda games, is its open world. Morrowind is a strange place, with giant mushrooms, interesting buildings and creatures you don’t see in the world of The Elder Scrolls. The island has barren areas that feel lonely but at the same time chaotic because there is always something to do. There’s always an interesting looking ruin, a cavern that needs to be unraveled, or the very mysterious Dwemer disappearing, leaving behind very mysterious and rather violent robots. In terms of exploration, I love Morrowind, and I’ve loved all of Bethesda’s RPGs. Morrowind is just something special, mainly because it’s so unpolished and different from its sequels, which gives the game a very special feel to it, and as the series and Bethesda’s games get more streamlined, this This feeling is disappearing more and more. I hope Starfield captures some of this madness, since it’s Bethesda’s new uncharted territory. It will be exciting.
When I say unretouched, I mean it. Morrowind is ugly! Always. The characters look angular and clunky, the cities are brown and boring, and many areas are not particularly lush and consist of black rocks and gray soil. Some areas have dust storms, which are brown carpets that reduce visibility. It’s all a bit boring, but it also makes the colors in there stand out. However, there are also areas that are more lush, where you’ll encounter these blue jellyfish-like creatures called Netch, and they still look great. As such, there are ups and downs when traveling around volcanic land.
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If you choose to go to Nexus Mods to update the graphics like I did, you can drastically change the look of the game. Over the 20 years the game has existed, thousands of mods have been created. I found that the total conversion adds 200 mods, making the game more colorful and looking softer. However, the game is still 20 years old and you can’t sand off some crap, but it can change the feel of the game. Instead of using these mods, I’ve made mods to make the game less edgy, and these fix a lot of things that annoy me. For example, the magic system is not simple, with mods, it becomes easier to manage. Using mods also makes enchanting and alchemy a bit easier, all the things I personally struggle with are simplified and it makes the game better for me to focus on enjoying the game’s strengths.
One of the best things about Morrowind is the music, composed by Jeremy Sur. There isn’t a lot of music in the game, and as you travel through the world, the music is pretty minimal, but also very atmospheric. Then there’s the Morrowind theme, you’ll find versions of it in subsequent games in the series, and Morrowind has the best version, in my opinion. I love the game’s quiet and later bombastic intro, which is great, but there’s also a lot of pieces in the game that stay with you after you’ve played Morrowind. 20 years later, I still love running around with this music in my ears.
So can Morrowind hold on? Yes, I think so. The game is showing its age and has some pretty sharp edges, but if you give it time, it will turn on and become a game of legend. Mods can then be added to sand down those edges a bit.
