The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Description official descriptions
Freed by the decree of Uriel Septim VII, the Emperor of Tamriel, a lone prisoner is transported to the province of Morrowind. It seems that the strange dreams this prisoner has been having lately may have a connection to equally strange events occurring there. The protagonist is given a simple assignment: join the Blades, a secret organization whose goal is to protect the safety of the Emperor. This leads to a discovery of an ancient prophecy and an evil scheme concocted by a powerful deity whom the protagonist alone is able to stop.
Conceived in the tradition of the Elder Scrolls series, Morrowind is a fantasy role-playing game with a vast world open for exploration. After being released from a prison ship at the shores of the island Vvardenfell, the protagonist may do more or less what he or she wants: follow the main quest and solve the mystery of an ancient prophecy, join any of roughly a dozen guilds and rise in their hierarchy by performing duties, or simply explore the gigantic island with its stylistically diverse cities, hundreds of dungeons and tombs, ancient ruins and mighty fortresses.
Morrowind uses a two-stage skill system. The hero’s primary stats (strength etc.) increase with each level gained, while secondary abilities improve by use – for example, the more often the character jumps, the more proficient he or she becomes in the Acrobatics skill, etc. The action-oriented fights are simple exchanges of strikes or spells, until one combatant dies. The enemy's hit points and condition were not originally shown; however, at the request of customers a health bar was added for enemies as part of the first upgrade patch.
The protagonist's race and gender, but also his or her reputation influence the reactions of NPCs. If a character’s sympathy for the hero is low (rated on a scale from 1 to 100), he might refuse to answer questions; if it is high, the player will get more detailed information and better bargains in shops. Most quests involving other persons can be solved by persuasion, pick-pocketing, or simply by force.
The game's NDL 3D game engine is powerful in drawing wide, detailed outdoor landscapes as well as complex indoor environments. Transitions are not fluent; houses and dungeons must be loaded upon entering.
Spellings
- 上古卷轴III:晨风 - Simplified Chinese spelling
- 上古捲軸 III:é”捲晨風 - Traditional Chinese spelling
Groups +
- Animals: Cats
- Console Generation Exclusives: Xbox
- Covermount: Fullgames
- Elder Scrolls series
- Fantasy creatures: Dwarves
- Fantasy creatures: Elves
- Fantasy creatures: Golems
- Fantasy creatures: Orcs
- Gameplay feature: Alchemy
- Gameplay feature: Burden / Encumbrance
- Gameplay feature: Character development - Repetition
- Gameplay feature: Drowning
- Gameplay feature: Equipment quick slots
- Gameplay feature: Hunting
- Gameplay feature: Journal
- Gameplay feature: Paper doll inventory
- Gameplay feature: Pickpocketing
- Middleware: Bink Video
- Middleware: Gamebryo / Lightspeed / NetImmerse
- PC Gamer Presents games
- Physical Bonus Content: World Map
- Protagonist: Female (option)
- Protagonist: Visually customizable character
- Software Pyramide releases
- Technology: amBX
- Ubisoft eXclusive releases
- Xbox Classics releases
- Xbox Platinum Hits releases
Screenshots
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Videos
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Credits (Windows version)
118 People (80 developers, 38 thanks) · View all
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Lead XBox Programmer | |
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World Art & Building | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 89% (based on 83 ratings)
Players
Average score: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 294 ratings with 23 reviews)
The Good
The Elder Scrolls franchise has always been one of debate. Some love it others hate. With it 3rd installment Morrowind, we find a game that not only lives up to it’s predecessors, but surpasses them. This was the best of the series until Oblivion that is.
“Each Prophecy Is Preceded By The Coming Of The Hero, If They Fail To Appear…”
Morrowind opens with a somewhat cryptic montage. You awaken from your dream, or was it a vision? To find that your are on route to Morrowind, the newest province of the Empire, it is the continent of the Dunmer, or the Dark Elves. You have been released by writ of the Emperor himself. You have been instructed to travel to Balmora, and report. Of course you do not have to. That is the point and fun of Morrowind. You can play 100 hours with out ever completing “Main Quests”. Or just breeze through the campaign and finish under 40 hours.
The main plot, should you choose to except it, is very good and very well written. It involves you being the reincarnation of The Nevaraine, an ancient hero of the Dunmer. Upon his death Lord Nevar, said he would return again when his people needed him most. That time is apparently coming. As Dagoth Er, is also being resurrected, he means to crush Morrowind under his heel. And is a former friend of Lord Nevar.
The story is filled with twists and turns. As you try and fulfill a ancient prophecy. And the conflict between The Nevaraine and Dagoth Er, is the classic Hero/Villain conflict. The plot is very rich and has everything. Prophecy, revenge, betrayal, conflict, and everything in between.
Who Are You?
Character Creation in Morrowind, is astounding. You have control over everything. From your race, there are 10 total. Your class, there are tons, and you can create you own Multi-class, by mixing and matching, or by using the editor. Speaking of the editor, Morrowind, for the PC includes a Tool Set disc. With this you can create quests, classes, weapons, structures, and even NPC’s. It is incredibly easy to use, as even I was able to use it, and I have no experience whatsoever designing games.
Leveling up is handled a little differently than most RPGS, as you do not gain EXP. Instead you learn by doing. If you want to be a master thief, you must pick locks, a swordsman, you must use your sword, or ply your other various trades. It makes for a more realistic gameplay experience, but may turn some players off.
“Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting….”
Combat in Morrowind, is visceral, and can be great fun. With various implements of destruction, you can slash, stab, and chop your way through various enemies. Blocking is a passive skill, which sort of sucks, but what can you do? The real fun is when you do battle with humans and humanoids, as dueling a fellow swordsman is more fun, that cutting down a monster.
Crime and Punishment
Will you be a model citizen, a thief, or even cold-blooded killer? However beware, unlike some “open-ended” games. Ahem, GTA. Crime can gain you actual punishment. From jail-time, which can lower your hard-earned stats if you gain a long sentence. To banishment. Or even death.
But remember, it is not a crime if you are not caught.
When It Comes To Graphics This Game Steals The Show
The visuals in Morrowind are excellent. The continent of Vvardenfell, or Morrowind. Manages to look alien and realistic all at the same time. As tall trees and enormous mushrooms, fill dense forests. Strange and familiar creatures wander the landscape. Small villages and monolithic cities abound, as well as dark dungeons and tall mountains. The human and non-human inhabitants look real alike. The lighting effects excellent, the sun lights the sky and depicts realistic shadows, as does the glow of the twin moons. The changing time of day and weather also effects the look of the game. And the torch-light cast on your avatar looks stunning.
The sound and music is excellent as well. Combat sound effects are loud and reverberate. Voice overs sound great. But are not that common. Monsters roar, and spells sound eerie. There is lack of ambiance, but that can be solved by downloading a quick add-on.
The music steals the show here. With an epic score composed by videogame maestro, Jeremy Soule. The tunes range from, epic, heroic, to frantic as your engage in combat.
The Bad
The Bad and The Ugly
Well, the leveling system, is not for everyone. And Bethesda could have taken measures to make the world seem more populated. But this is a flaw in most games like this.
It can be very difficult getting started, combat will be very hard, and the game can overwhelming. Yet towards the end the game is too easy. Other balance issues abound.
The game also tends to very buggy. But at least updates are common.
This game has fairly low system requirements considering how impressive it is. Yet still may be too much for some systems, and others may have trouble getting it to work properly, despite the fact that they meet all the system requirements.
Passive blocking is the bane of this game. Why do you have no control over your shield, and weapon when it comes to blocking? At least Oblivion remedies this.
The Bottom Line
In the end Morrowind, is a fun, and addictive RPG experience that over comes it’s many flaws. And user-created content just adds to an already huge game. Live another life and have fun exploring and adventuring in the vast world of Vvardenfell.
Windows · by MasterMegid (723) · 2006
Fun game if only somewhere else
The Good
After some playing, what strikes me the most with Morrowind is it's great overall open ended feeling, both positively and negatively. You can walk to wherever you
want and do the quests you want to do, in any order you want. It's fun just traveling the island and chance
upon an impressive castle or some old ruins to explore. And with some skill in lockpicking even breaking into some house in
the city and steal the money can be good fun sometimes. The freedom to play around is very creative and stimulating for
the imagination. That also applies to the creation of your character, which can be tailored very much to your liking.
And as each of the main professions has its own guild on the island there is the possibility to join one of them and do
quests for them. There are even vampire clans to join! Like a lot of other RPG's the game is full of details, like books and stuff, and if you decide to steal something
and someone spots you, you lose reputation points. And it's not to good to be low on reputation as it makes it difficult
to talk to the NPC's.
What I really like about this game is that even after you have finished the main quest you can continue playing, which is to the credit of the creators and shows that they really had a vision of a game as open ended as possible. This is something I have missed in a lot of other games because I always wanted to have the chance to keep playing with my favourite character even after I had finished. To be true, there is no real end to this game, and in that sense it is truly open ended in the best sense of the word.
To top it off, the graphics are very nice with beautiful water effects and the day has its rotation with light and darkness.
During the night you can see the stars shining in the night sky, and inside the houses there are burning fireplaces and
candles, in contrast to the shadows which adds much to the nice atmosphere.
The Bad
There was ONE big problem that kept me from wanting to play. The landscape of Vvardenfell is boring. A dead wasteland with
huge funguses and giant insects that serves as transports between the cities. Everything is brown and colourless. Highly
uninspiring, and I don't understand why the designers wanted such a world, blah. A lot of the NPC's lack personality and
are rather repetitive in their dialogue. The creatures of the island spawn very randomly and that doesn't feel very
realistic. This is a feature of these kind of open ended games but doesn't feel very good implemented here.
To increase a skill you can practice that skill in the game in real time. So if you want to improve your acrobatics
skill, all you have to do is jump all the way to your destination and it will increase. Interesting thought
but quite silly in practice. If it had been better implemented it could have worked. You also advance in combat
with experience and here it works better except that in the beginning you are so bad at fighting that when you
encounter a hostile rat on your first journey, you have to fight like a tiger not to get killed. And that even if you are
armed with a sword. Sure, you get better at fighting with increasing experience, but having problems with
bashing a rat. Give me a break.
The Bottom Line
As I said, the environment was the biggest obstacle for me to enjoy this game, which is sad because it IS an exciting game
in itself despite all of it's flaws which are inherent in this series of games, and stems from having such an open endedness.
I personally prefer the island in the expansion Bloodmoon which has more traditional forest terrain.
Windows · by Vashna (17) · 2007
The Good
This game is BIG. It's graphics are BEST. There tons of activities, tons of possibilities and tons of stuff to collect. You can always play it again and again and choose different paths, its almost impossible to get bored. The music is perfect
The Bad
When I first read the review of Morrowind in a local computer zine, I was only thinking about one thing: I NEED THAT GAME. It was in Summer 2002, and I even couldn't imagine that my dream would come true. My PC was Pentium 166, so I figured it'll take years to get a new PC (I didn't have any money). But in February 2003, my dreams came true: I bought a normal, 1700MHz PC. By that time I had forgotten about Morrowind and one day I started reading about it again and went out and bought the game. When I was coming home from the shop I already imagined it: my char wondering around Morrowind, slaying stuff. But when I installed it, and started the game, I was disappointed. Why you ask?
The game itself is good. REAL good. BUT. All the NPCs are just standing there. They aren't doing anything. Even the badguys aren't lurking around (except wild "animals"), they are just standing there and waiting for you. When I first saw Syena Need (sorry I don't remember the exact name but It's the first town you see in Morrowind) I thought those people were zombies because all they did was walked around and said "Make it quick outlander, I havent got much time". Why are they so boring? Why Bethseda was working on Morrowind for 6 years and didn't make NPCs more active?!?!! Even Ultima 9 has that! That is the worst part of this game.
The Bottom Line
Although it has it's setbacks, this game is good. It has excellent graphics and sound and a lot of activities to do. Buy it!
Windows · by Sir Freeman (1) · 2003
Discussion
Subject | By | Date |
---|---|---|
Add Game Group | karnak1 (22) | Dec 24, 2012 |
Morrowind vs. Oblivion | Unicorn Lynx (181628) | Jul 26, 2007 |
Trivia
1001 Video Games
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.
Content
Morrowind is told to include 3244 NPCs, 316.042 hand placed objects, 480 billion possible characters to create and play, 150 billion spells by using spellmaking in the game, and six full sized novels worth of text.
Creature differences
Some monsters and creatures went through drastic visual changes from Daggerfall and Battlespire to Morrowind. First, the type of khajiit are the same as those presented in Redguard, while the Dremora were turned from fair-skinned, horned demons to black and red-skinned demons. Harpies were replaced with (visually at least) Winged Twilights, and other monsters such as the slaughterfish, orcs and others remain much the same, though much better looking in true 3D.
Graphics
The reason Morrowind taxed higher-end computers as late as 2004 was the high number of polygons rendered in larger and busier areas.
References
There is a single daedric crescent from Battlespire hidden in Morrowind, but getting to it requires some work and initiative (it is not a part of any main or faction quest), or access to a hint guide.
Awards
- 4Players
- 2002 – #9 Best PC Game of the Year (Readers' Vote)
- Computer Games Magazine
- March 2003 (Issue #148) - #3 overall in the "10 Best Games of 2002" list
- Computer Gaming World
- April 2003 (Issue #225) – RPG of the Year
- GameSpy
- 2002 - PC RPG of the Year
- 2011 – #14 Top PC Game of the 2000s
- RPG Vault
- 2002 - Game of the Year
- 2002 - Role-Playing Game of the Year
Information also contributed by calavera, Jason Musgrave, ShadowStrike and WildKard
Analytics
Related Sites +
-
Baldurdash
Kevin Dorner's site has bug fixes for Morrowind -
Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The official homepage of Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Contains general information, downloads, art, and plug-ins. -
Hints for Morrowind
Need just a few clues about Morrowind? These question and answer hints provide nudges before the final solutions are revealed. -
Morroblivion
A free mod that brings Morrowind into Oblivion by converting the game files. -
Morrowind Summit
A Morrowind fan site containing vast amounts of information about the land of Morrowind and how to create your own Morrowind adventures. -
Morrowind at RPGDot
Contains news, information, and downloads for Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. -
Telesphoros' List o' Mods
One man's opinion of the ESSENTIAL fan-made enhancements (mods) to the Morrowind world. -
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - FAQs & Guides
A multitude of walkthroughs, faqs, maps, text files on Morrowind. -
Wikipedia: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Article about the game in the open encyclopedia -
Wiwiland
French modding community with a lot of exclusive mods.
Identifiers +
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by NeoMoose.
Xbox One added by Kennyannydenny. Xbox Cloud Gaming added by Sciere.
Additional contributors: PCGamer77, -Chris, Unicorn Lynx, Jeanne, OFoglada, Shoddyan, Sciere, Aubustou, Paulus18950, Patrick Bregger, Plok, FatherJack, Kennyannydenny.
Game added May 10, 2002. Last modified March 10, 2025.