Morrowind Review

Morrowind: An Odious Derp-about

In cRPG History Morrowind is the most overrated cRPG by a long shot. By god, did the casual gamers embrace this stinker: a huge mob, a horde -- people who had never played a game before, furry fans and LARPers.

No cRPG of the time appealed to the casual gamer more than Morrowind, which is a meaningless doddle from beginning to end.

Morrowind's reddit-level player-base rants and raves about how good Morrowind's graphics are, but Morrowind came out in 2002, six years after Quake. SIX YEARS AFTER. Six years is a life-time in terms of software and hardware tech-evolution, yet Quake's 3D engine is infinitely superior.

Morrowind's fanbase thinks Morrowind's UI is advanced because you can resize and drag windows around, but computer games employed that feature 16 years before Morrowind. Proof: Flight Simulator 2 Amiga 1986.

And oh dear, what do we have here? Why, it's Midwinter of 1989 -- an open-world 3D game that came out 12 years before Morrowind. With skiing, sniping and hang-gliding.

I guess when Morrowind was the first computer game they had ever played, to them Morrowind originated everything. And was super-advanced. Thankfully, those who merely affect insight tend to shy away from undertaking to write 2 million words of computer-game history. Instead, they parrot falsehoods in reddit echo-chambers.

You are reading an article written by the author of 1990s Computer Game History. Morrowind is one of the many reasons 2000s computer-gaming is a shameful disgrace in comparison to 1990s computer-gaming. Indeed, Morrowind left a stain on computer-gaming, an indelible stain. Truth be told, Morrowind helped usher in what I refer to as The Dark Ages of Computer Games.

That Morrowind was developed for and playable on Xbox consoles should tell the reader all they need to know about this turd. You couldn't play Fallout, Arcanum or Jagged Alliance 2 on consoles -- these games are far superior to and also predate Morrowind.

Deus Ex 1 was ported to the lowly PS2 console two years after the PC version went Gold, yet the port pales in comparison to the original PC version due to PS2 hardware limitations. But Morrowind? -- it pandered to Xbox from Day 1. As such, there is nothing about Morrowind that says "I'm a PC game!" other than uninstall.exe, which I double-clicked with relish after forcing myself to replay the doddle in its loathsome entirety (to write this review).

While also largely a failure of cRPG Design, Daggerfall of 1996 was much more ambitious than Morrowind. And surprise surprise! -- there has been no console version in sight for 28 years.

Paving the way for the absolute worst cRPG in history (Oblivion With Guns), Morrowind consists of boring, non-lethal exploration akin to hiking simulators along with sluggish UI, level-scaled loot and enemies, challengeless combat, repetitive music, fluff-based reactivity, poor pathfinding, unreadable journal, keyword dialogue system, broken economy, cutscene-laden chargen as well as characterizations, factions, questing and lore that are as shallow as puddles.

Indeed, we are talking about some rock-bottom, low-brow, dragging-of-the-knuckles gaming right here. Morrowind is game in which the Acrobatics skill is improved by jumping from a tremendous height, hitting the ground hard and breaking ones' legs. You can actually hear the bones break as the Acrobatics skill goes up.

Yes, I'm sure breaking bones = Olympian athlete. Especially in the sport of gymnastics.

Morrowind's unintuitive leveling system cannot be outlined in one paragraph -- or even three paragraphs. Since I don't want to bog this review down with examples, suffice it to say that grossly suboptimal cRPG Builds often result from playing naturally and to a build's strengths, and that Morrowind's leveling system is stupid and broken.

I have published over 100 builds for 20 different cRPGs. More than anyone else in the world. But Morrowind? Its builds are not interesting.

When not set to be immoveable statues Morrowind NPCs -- which have gigantic hitboxes -- constantly get in our way as we walk around towns. As they mope about muttering to themselves in generic voicesets, these inconsequentials block bridges, doorways and walkways whenever they can. Not only that, but they often stop squarely in front of us, stare us straight in the face and say something downright rude. Thus does the Daedric Dai-katana come crashing down upon the skull.

Daedric Dai-katana Morrowind:

Daedric Long Bow Morrowind:

If I want books and lore, I'll read Malazan: Book of the Fallen. Or LotR. Morrowind's item-books are naught but scribbled twaddlings in comparison. What we want in games is gameplay. A startling revelation, I know. In the genre of cRPGs the likes of stories, setting and lore function as cheap motivators in comparison to game mechanics yet it is barely possible to speak of Morrowind's gameplay due to its borderline non-existence.

Quality cRPG gameplay is measured by the frequency and duration of player-engagement in cRPG mechanics. Holding down the W-key 90% of the time is not gameplay. And when a patch added Q-key auto-run, player-engagement was not exactly enhanced. Moreover, sight-seeing is not gameplay and nor is clicking on keywords for loredumps and spamming the attack button.

Morrowind is a game that almost plays itself. Indeed, that is how its sophisticated player-base level some of the skills: by leaving the game running in their absence.

In risible attempts to ascribe an unmerited importance or scholarly significance to Morrowind, mainstream commentary never tires of telling its readers how the developers studied real-world cultures, biomes and architecture for creative inspiration.

As if fantasy and sci-fi never draw off the real world: praising fantasy and sci-fi for drawing off the real world is certifiable stupidity.

Morrowind is often celebrated for the "awe-inspiring vastness" of its landmass, but in reality there is barely anything to do, see or slay on the isle of Vvardenfell, which is empty, lifeless and dull.

Moreover, the size of Vvardenfell is trivialized by the inclusion of fast travel in the form of boats, Silt Striders, Guild Guides, Propylon Chambers and spells such as Levitate, Almsivi Intervention, Divine Intervention and Mark/Recall.

Such a vast and foreboding world it is, when you can instantly travel from one side to the other, at any time.

 

In addition, Morrowind runs like my Aunt May after she's had too much sherry to drink; it was poorly and unambitiously coded. Frequent CTDs aside, instead of being properly seamless in exploration its all-but-empty world was made up of cells that constantly loaded into RAM as the player derped about in slo-mo, causing immersion-breaking framerate drops during cell-transition even in barebones zones. In 2D terms, this is the equivalent of flip-screen vs. hardware scrolling.

That 20 years subsequent to Morrowind's release SSDs, fast RAM and super-CPUs can finally disguise (to a degree) cell-transition lag, doesn't mean Morrowind's cRPG Engine isn't poorly-coded in comparison to its contemporaries. And no amount of tech-advancement can conceal the lack of seamless transition, to say nothing else of Morrowind's gimped design.

Just to walk into an empty house the game had to load a new cell -- indeed, a new zone: doors don't open or close; they're teleports -- yet Fallout 1, Jagged Alliance 2 and even casual jank like Gothic featured genuine seamlessness, which is mandatory in any game that trumpets explorative immersion as its hallmark, and doesn't want to be laughed at, booed and egged off-stage.

Morrowind Character Creation

While we could inflict blunt-force trauma on each and every aspect of Morrowind's degenerate design, allow me to expand a little more on one thing: what I mean by "cutscene-laden chargen."

Chargen is short for character generation, and cutscenes are segments in which we lose control of our character and just passively observe the goings-on (the opposite of gameplay).

(This degenerate trend began with the scripted sequences of Half-Life 1, and has since become a mainstay of PC "gaming".)

Instead of having one chargen menu that allows us to set the foundations of our character build and then begin the game immediately (like a proper cRPG such as Fallout 1), Morrowind breaks chargen up into a hand-holding, spoon-feeding process of watching and listening to NPCs babble on.

• Listen to Jiub babble on, THEN enter your Name.
• Now wait for another NPC to approach, follow him in slo-mo to the next NPC, listen to him babble on, and THEN choose an Origin.
• Now follow him in slo-mo to the next NPC, listen to him babble on and THEN choose the stats.

And only after walking -- in slo-mo -- through the interior of a building while being hand-held every step of the way by game-pausing pop-up dialogues, are we finally permitted to leave the building and BEGIN THE GAME. In slo-mo.

Even on replays Morrowind will not let players skip such nonsense.

Morrowind was basically made for people who had never played a game before, yet many gamers had mastered much more difficult 3D games than Morrowind years before, such as Quake 1 (1996).

Morrowind is a casual game since its design assumes the player has no gaming pedigree or aptitude whatsoever.

Morrowind and subsequent TES games became popular by pandering to non-gamers. They brought in millions of people that don't even like computer games: they just like to walk around, look at stuff and decorate houses -- the virtual sight-seers, homemakers and hoarders.

It is that mentality that has all but ruined computer games. Just look at the state of computer games from 2002 to 2024: over two decades of "Absolutely Disgusting".

You can easily see how computer games devolved by quickly scrolling through Computer Games Listed in Chronological Order. Morrowind and other Degenerates of its kind ushered in what I have rightfully called The Dark Ages of Computer-gaming.

cf. King-tier Computer Game Criticism:

• The Dark Ages of Computer-gaming
• Oblivion With Guns is the Worst RPG Game of All-time
• Fallout 1: The Formalizer, The Definition & The Destroyer
• Tearing Modern RPG Games to Shreds
• Ape-caricatures of Austere Originals: RPG Game Remakes
• A Thorough Rubbishing of Computer Game Journalism
• Taking a Battle-axe to One of My Favorite cRPGs
• Blunt-force Trauma Inflicted on an Overrated Classic
• cRPG Blog (Master Index)