About a month ago, the wife dragged me to Target after work because she needed some new bras. Amazing how long it can take a woman to pick out undergarments. I was killing time looking at their meager supply of computer games when I saw one that looked interesting, Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls III Game of the Year Edition. Hmmm, game of the year? A great looking RPG plus two expansion packs for $20? How could I go wrong?
I got home and installed it, noticing that it also came with a complete construction kit. I read the manual while waiting for it to install and found the character system interesting. Like many paper RPGs nowadays it uses a hybrid class/skills system with levels. Now I'm a big fan of GURPS with it's classless, no-levels system of character points, but this looked intriguing.
You can use a pregenerated class or create your own by choosing a specialty of combat, magic or stealth, two favored attributes out of the list of strength, endurance, intelligence, willpower, speed, agility, personality and luck. You then choose five major and five minor skills from a list of about 30 skills, each of which is governed by a different attribute.
You also choose a race and birth sign for your character. Races include Altmer, or High Elves who are good at magic but vulnerable to many kinds of elemental attacks, Argonians, a lizard-man type race; Bosmer, or Wood Elves, a short crafty race, great with a bow and not bad with a lockpick either; Bretons, a human race of potent magic users; Dunmer, or Dark Elves, who are the native race of the island of Vvardenfell where you start the game and good at both stealth and magic; Imperials, the ruling class of the game who make decent fighters and also have good communications skills; Khajit, a felinoid race who excel at stealth; Nords, a northern race of humans suited to the barbarian lifestyle; Orcs, a pig-man race with a flair for fighting; and Redguards, another human race quite suited to fighting.
Race determines starting attributes, skill bonuses, and special powers and weaknesses. The races are not perfectly balanced in terms of power, but the game focuses on open ended role playing and provides plenty of opportunities to overcome weakness, so a player need not focus to much on playing the best race and can simply play one that suits him.
Players gain levels by raising skills through use or training. Raising any combination of major and minor skills by a total of ten points will increase the character's level. Gaining a level increases maximum health and fatigue levels, but not Magicka, the game's magic point attribute. It also allows the player to increase up to three attributes. Any attributes can be increased, but a complicated system of multipliers means it will be more advantageous to raise attributes whose skills have been used frequently during the previous level.
Without having raised any of the skills governed by an attribute, you can raise that attribute by one point. If you raise even one of them by one point, you can raise it two points. After that, you total the level of governed skills raised, counting miscellaneous skills (everything that isn't a major or minor skill) as at most four points, and divide by two, with a maximum of five points. As you can see, it's complicated.
This leveling system is a minor weak point in the game. The character can gain anywhere from three to fifteen attribute points per level, so the player is forced to think about the game mechanics in order to maximize their characters progression, and this cuts back on the immersive quality of the game.
And what an immersive quality it has! The game is played in a first person style, though the camera can be switched to third person. The game is immense, with huge, detailed outdoor and indoor areas that rival any MMORPG I've played. Thousands of NPCs inhabit the island's many cities and towns. Dozens (if not hundreds, I haven't seen them all by a long shot) of dungeons and ruins filled with danger and treasure await a daring explorer.
The gameplay is completely open ended. There is a main quest that leads the hero to a world changing conclusion, but this quest needn't even be played. The player may join many different factions: the fighters' guild, thieves' guild, mages' guild, Imperial cult, native temple, Imperial legion, one of the three native Noble Houses of Hlaalu, Redoran or Telvanni, or even the assassin guild if one can find it.
Quests given by these factions can lead to fame and great rewards as the character rises through the ranks of the factions, perhaps even becoming the faction leader in the end. Some factions are in conflict with others, for instance the Noble Houses will send the characters on missions to steal business from, assassinate or steal from the other houses.
The player is free to complete most of these quests on their own timetable and in their own way. Some may use force, others stealth, and others may use magic or persuasion to complete the tasks given by the various factions. Some require careful strategy while others are simple "run and fetch" type of quests.
Fighting is done with the mouse on the PC version. Point at an enemy, get close enough and click and the character will launch a chopping attack. Holding down other keys will enable you to perform a slash or stab instead. If an attack is successful, damage done is based on the weapon, the characters strength, the enemy's armor, and the length of time the mouse button is held down.
Distance weapons such as bows, daggers and throwing stars are a bit trickier to use as they require actual aiming and compensation for both distance and a particular weapons peculiarities. Some bows seem to pull to one side or the other of the crosshairs, for instance.
Stealth and thievery are an interesting option in the game. Players may sneak to avoid detection, although the game mechanics are simple, without taking into account lighting or noise. They may also pickpocket or backstab while sneaking, although both of these require quite a high skill level to pull off regularly. Locks can be picked and traps disarmed with the appropriate tools.
In my opinion, the magick system, while incredibly detailed and fun is not very well balanced. Most good spells require a large percentage of even the best mage's magicka reserves, which do not regenerate unless the character sleeps or uses potions. This means that alchemy will be a crucial skill for any true mage. Magic spells fall into different colleges: alteration, which covers things like magically unlocking things; destruction, the college for attack spells, restoration which covers healing spells; mysticism which covers things like levitation and telekinesis; illusion which has spells such as paralyze, hide, and silence; and conjuration, the college of summoning.
While various premade spells may be purchased from different NPCs, certain NPCs also offer spellmaking services where different effects the character has learned in other spells can be modified or combined into a new spell.
Enchantments can be purchased, usually for quite a bit of money, or made with the enchantment skill, which may fail. First a character needs a soul gem. Then they cast a soul trap spell, either their own or from a scroll or enchanted item, and kills the creature it was cast on. That creature's soul is now trapped in the gem and can be used to power enchanted items. More powerful creatures yield more powerful enchantments. Effects can be selected from amongst the spells the character has learned.
Alchemy is a critical skill for a mage, as it lets them make potions which can fortify or restore magicka, as well as many other useful effects. Different plants and animal parts, as well as gems and other items have magical properties. Using various alchemical tools, two or more items with the same property can be combined to yield a potion with that property. Almost any effect that can be made using a spell can also be made using alchemy. Only alchemy (or sleep, which is hard to do in the middle of combat) can restore magicka, which is why it is crucial for a mage.
Without the expansion packs the game could easily take over 100 hours, and with both the packs that come with the Game of the Year edition, the gameplay is well over 200 hours. That would just be to finish the main quests and a few side quests. To explore the entire area and finish every single quest would easily take over 500 hours, and the replay value is immense.
Add on to that a construction set and a dedicated community of module makers and you have a game that could eat up years of your life. But don't take too long, because the next installment in the saga should be out sometime during the holiday season. Named Oblivion after the name of the outer plane inhabited by demons in the game, this next game promises to be even larger with more detailed combat and magic systems and an improved NPC AI which should make for some very open ended gameplay.
