Eventually I started to play Morrowind a little less. I was being more sociable when all my friends discovered we could start drinking. And I got together with the girl whose maths book I stole, so it was more a lack of time than anything else. I still played it, probably more than any other games actually, but just less. After a while with School long ended and GCSE results in, Arron went into the Army (fighters guild, right?) and I went to college and playing time dwindled further. About a year later though, the Game of The Year edition got released for the xbox.
Bloodmoon and Tribunal, Morrowinds only two official expansions, had been released on the PC for a while – I was aware of them but wasn’t really a pc gamer. My xbox was in my room where as the only pc in the house was shared, so playing games on it properly wasn’t really an option. The day that the GoTY edition was released I was quite excited and hurried down to GameJam on my lunch break, now being manned by Baz who later turned into a really cool friend and sometimes drinking buddy. They never had any in stock. I went to GAME to be told the same news too, but they said the bigger store in a larger city not too far away might have a copy. I grabbed a college friend and convinced him to skip the afternoon lessons with me to go and get one. It was a quest, and an hour or so later we had succeeded. My fire was re-kindled with the promise of all new content.
I killed everyone in there to take it as my own house. I later found out it’s a factions HQ. Oops.
Bloodmoon was far better than Tribunal, but both were excellent. Tribunal took you over to the mainland in the middle of a city and put you in a quest of conspiracies, assassinations, and a shit ton of crawling through sewers killing goblins. It did have an amazing piece where you had to fight someone posing as an evil version of you, but it just wasn’t quite as good as the vanilla game. Bloodmoon though, well that was far more interesting. It took you to a new island in the frozen North and was fascinating. There is a whole plot of you overseeing the construction of a new town, which actually does get constructed as you go, only for it to be sacked by werewolves. There are grand Norse halls, covered in snow; an abominable snowman sitting amongst severed limbs that you have to track down, and of course those werewolves. It was an excellent addition of adventure, and still in-keeping with the Morrowind lore. Plus it had the best item in any game ever, a ring you could put on to turn you into a werewolf at will. Amazing.
After a few years, I finally ran out of things to do with Morrowind. It got to the point where I was just wandering around trying to find new quests to take on and eventually I quit. I restarted it a couple of times with new characters over the years since then, on the PC obviously, but never quite managing to re-live the days gone by. Too much has changed. I married that girl whose maths book I stole. Oblivion got released, and while no where near as interesting as Morrowind, it’s combat and visuals were far better, spoiling me. And, incidentally, GameJam has also long shutdown. And I have even less time to shove into one old game like Morrowind than it deserves. When I dedicate time to games now, there are releases that need my attention because I haven’t played them and knowing about games requires that I do, so putting 200 hours into something that I know all this about from memory would be ludicrous if not massively enjoyable.
Morrowind is still my favourite game. I said about Dragon Age that it was the best game that I have ever played, and from a technical standpoint it possibly is – it’s ridiculously pretty, has solid combat, and has an amazing central narrative, but on reflection I think was wrong because it isn’t all about a technical standpoint. Even after all these years not Dragon Age, nor Oblivion, nor anything else can capture what Morrowind achieved. It was constantly interesting, freeform and crammed full of things to do. Sure it had faults; the combat was a bit shoddy and it had a few dodgy quests, but none of it matters. It was crazy and charming. Even now I can think of loads I haven’t talked about in here – like the mage that falls from the sky because of a failed spell, or the mad witch that knows about a legendary bow that smells of ash yams – I could go on forever. You absolutely have to play it.
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I remember watching my friend play this on his PC when it came out, but my own machine wasn’t fast enough at the time to run it. I constantly argued with him that Fallout 2 was the better game. I’d probably stick by this statement, still, just because it’s ‘my’ game in the same way that Morrowind is ‘yours’.
Loved reading this, though, and it makes me want to try it again. There’s a good energy whenever someone writes/talks passionately about their favourite games.
Thanks man, glad you enjoyed reading it. :)
Great article, really brings back the memories.
I was working in Frankfurt when this came out. I would work night shifts at the airport with one guy called Uwe. He used to bring his laptop in and play games all night (we weren’t air traffic control!)
One night he bought this in, and I sat mesmerised for hours and hours just watching him play. The end of the week I went and bought a PC and a copy to play, and never looked back- i sunk days into this game.
I lived with this guy who smoked Cuban cigars and ground his own coffee beans, and to this day, whenever I smell cigar smoke and coffee, i’m transported back to Vradenfell.
Thanks for writing this. You didn’ mention the excellent mod scene though which Morrowind has, and can really reviatelise the game.
My pleasure. The mod scene is an article in it’s own right, never got that much into it par some retexture packs and stuff like “better grass” – also taking cliff racers out. If there is anything stand out then let me know; any excuse for me to drop back into Morrowind is welcome.
What a bag of sentimental shit.
Your face is a bag of sentimental shit. -1!
Hostile work environment for other writers. +1
Trolling. +1
Encouraging Paul. -1
Well, the comment moderation thing works. Naturally I don’t think this of Craig’s article. It’s really a very good article. For him.
oh than- heyyyyyyyy!
That was a really nice write up, Craig. I’ve got this on my Steam list, but alas, still undownloaded. I’ll have to get around to it some time soon. Sounds like my kind of game.
That said, you married the girl whose math book you stole?! Wow. Sounds like an interesting story all in itself! But that’s personal, of course.
I wasn’t really aware of how much depth Morrowind’s lore had. Huh. I wonder what happened with Oblivion. From the look of it, it doesn’t seem like it has nearly as much as depth, and that’s just me reading this article.
Thanks man. Oblivion simplified, they went for a tighter system and the game was weaker for it. You can summarise it with how it handles armour really:
In morrowind you could wear three tiers of clothing on your top half; a shirt, armour, then a robe. The armour was broken down into components so cuirass, left pauldron, right pauldron, left gauntlet/bracer, right gauntlet/bracer – and different types could even have different styles (for example the House Hlaalu guards either had pointy pauldrons or curved ones). So, for example, you could have an enchanted shirt under an armour set which is a mix of different types, and then a robe covering it all.
In Oblivion you had one tier (robe or armour or shirt) + gauntlets and you couldn’t pick different pauldrons.
They took out a lot of complexity to make it easier to get along with, not realising that it was the depth that made Morrowind great. The world was simpler, the lore was simpler, the amount of quests was a lot fewer. Combat was good though, and it had horses, but then they completely fucked the levelling system.
Sort of related – Fallout continued with the Oblivion way of doing things too unfortunately; I’m hoping that New Vegas claws some Morrowind in there.
Oh, wow, that is definitely a ton of depth. Morrowind is going up on my to play list now. I might have to steal the equipment system for my own game, from the sounds of it.
Yeah, I really hope NV changes things around. It certainly has that potential. FO3 was my first Bethesda game, and I was pretty blown away by it, even vanilla (right, I should go and actually fix my mod list. :S), just because I had never played anything like it. I guess Oblivion is a good game in its own right, just not quite as neat as Morrowind. Likewise with FO3 and the other FOs (though from what I can tell, FO3 was better at achieving that; maybe because it was such a drastic change from the other FOs? Unlike Morrowind -> Oblivion).