Looking towards TES VI

 

With Shattered Space out of the way a lot of eyes are not turning towards the horizon. More specifically, to Elder Scrolls VI. I think the consensus was to follow the Starfield yearly train for a while until TES VI was closer- but considering that is what the team consider billable content for their ailing game, I'm pretty sure most people have finally written off Starfield entirely. The game could be saved, no doubt- but Bethesda aren't interested enough in receiving feedback to do it. They're happy with the small base they got and consider them the Starfield fans, who are content with that level of output and thus do not require any catering to. Thus Starfield probably will never be worthy of being considered a main Bethesda franchise. Maybe when 2 rolls around in 2040- who knows? Either way, now the pressure is back on The Elder Scrolls.

Maybe pressure is the wrong word. Too light. It might be more appropriate to say that the weight of all the stars in heaven are beaming down on TES VI with an expectant glare. Bethesda seem to really struggle with developing on themselves, lovers of one of their games will find something essential missing in the next one along and it's making it very difficult for hardcore fans to stay attached to a developer that either doesn't understand what won them over to begin with, or are simply driven by some inexplicable vision that grows increasingly anathema to the rest of the Roleplaying world. I won't deny that Bethesda games truly are unique, but I'm starting to worry that in times to come that uniqueness will be best described in the way they cram endless monetised content farms into their entirely single player RPG worlds.

I was down for the idea of paid mods a long time ago- but they don't care enough to make that idea a respectable one. They've already grown tired of it and are moving on towards the next implementation of the system in the next game. It kind of reminds me of an irritable creative without expectations and deadlines, free to pick up and drop an idea at the change of the wind- never quite riding great designs and concepts to completion. All of which is why personally, I'm expecting The Elder Scrolls VI to break a lot of hearts when it finally arrive and finally tells us all what we don't want to hear- that Bethesda just don't have it anymore. That special spark which made Skyrim a generational masterpiece- which has been slipping since Fallout 4- might be finally gone from their eyes.

But then the stubborn delusional side of me wants to cast all that aside and say no- Skyrim was such a special game and you would have to be a straight fool not to see why! The tangible world space, living stories, space to paint whatever adventure you could imagine on the canvass of creativity. Even before the word 'mods' enters the conversation Skyrim was so very ahead of it's time. But let's talk about mods for a second. Skyrim was so very accessible to mod in a way that Starfield is proving... difficult on. Lacking official animation tools (cross fingers they're coming) animators are currently incapable of even porting old kits over. (Unless they use a tool that relies on the Script Extender, but Starfield's new paid modding system has literally cut a giant swathe through the community that many mod creators are avoiding third party compatibility tools so they might remain compatible with consoles. It's a whole mess right now.)

What I think The Elder Scrolls could do with, going forward, is a change up in their scenario management. Honestly, I think the assumption that a tight and excellent story can't fit into an open world RPG game in the style of Bethesda's is frank under ambition talking. Get a half decent fantasy writer on the payroll and let them go nuts, reign in the delivered product where needed and squeeze the rest of the simulation around that. The impact of a great narrative isn't just a solid boon nowadays, it's expected to get people through the door. Bethesda's best storylines have been Morrowind, which relies entirely on the quality of the world building, and Skyrim's- which is so simple and straight forward it doesn't have a chance to sag. All the others, their Fallouts, Oblivion, Starfield- all suffer under weak writing, soft scenarios or lacking commitment. They're so afraid of railroading players, when what they should be caring about is giving enough motive that players will give their RPG characters into the scenario. Ultimate freedom sounds good on paper- but few games that pursue that end up in the annals of history. 

Of course, we also need a total revision to the way combat works. First person melee combat is always a conundrum to solve- but Bethesda have never been there. Morrowind's combat was a mistake that was realised into the fall game for some reason, Oblivion's combat had some small promise but lacked commitment, Skyrim's was a regression of Oblivion's for some reason. Bethesda's latest games have shown a surprisingly solid grasp of their combat, with Starfield and Fallout's FPS touches- we can't go back to the land of noodle swinging come TES VI. It's just not possible. Give us just some of the basics. Dodges, parrying, stance breaking- I know I'm starting to sound like a Souls-nut but to be honest- Souls has established the bare minimum for satisfying medieval combat- this should be the foundation that a game like TES VI builds from. But considering modern Bethesda and their bar of 'quality', I'm just praying they even hit the industry bare minimum at this point...

 And most importantly I think that TES VI could really use some more focus. As much as Bethesda want to pretend they're making vastly different games between their three series- the truth is that Bethesda really carry the same basic bones from game to game, build upon that and then try and squeeze a new genre out of it on the backend. Most early fundamental working is fixing up the allgame under all the nonsense. Which is why I have to beg Bethesda not to get lost sticking in another superfluous settlement builder mode. It just doesn't fit The Elder Scrolls. Hearthfire was limited and focused- it was designed to fit into the world. Starfield's settlements serve little to no real purpose in the fantasy of the game- keep your focus, Bethesda- please!

I am scared for the next Elder Scrolls game, and that's because I've not really seen the hallmarks of the trendsetting Bethesda for a very long time now. But what scares me even more than that is just how delusional they seem to be internally about that. They still think of themselves as leaders within DLC, despite CDPR soundly trouncing them in that department over two of their most recent releases. They consider Starfield the best game they've ever made in some respects- which defies belief. They call Shattered Space the product of veteran talents who's work really shows on screen- which reads like an actual insult levied against them. Is this the Bethesda who has it in them to change the trajectory of their company and become a leader once again? I hope so. I really do.

Bethesda's biggest gap

 

With Starfield out of the way and now in the hands of the content delivery team who are said to be on the game for the next ten years- at least until the going gets rough and they decide to abandon the game at year 3 and then pretend they never said 'ten year plan' to begin with- (Bungie flashbacks galore) we can look unto the future. With Todd Howard pretty firmly declaring that he doesn't believe in spin-offs because he believes all those gameplay verticals can fit into a main line Fallout game (which he is horrendously wrong about, by the way. The day a Creation Engine game produces a half-decent stealth experience is the day I eat my hat.) the next title is most definitely going to be that Elder Scrolls VI game that was announced last decade, and with that comes my concerns, once again, that Bethesda are going to drop the bag.

Now to be very clear with you, I would consider myself a Bethesda fan. I think they have been extremely instrumental in establishing an identity to the entire western action RPG genre and have revolutionised the way that many games function as a result. Meaningful RPG visual customisation through the equipping of armour sets, fully immersive simulation worlds to experience loosely guided open worlds that let the curious explore- they wrote the book on all of that. And unlike many others out there, I don't actually believe that Bethesda has at all regressed from what they once were. What I think people are observing but not quite clocking, is the rest of the industry jumping forward by leaps and bounds whilst Bethesda hang around with their tackle out wondering how to proceed.

One manner in which Bethesda has consistently failed to make a splash, for which they absolutely must revise should they wish to have any remote foothold in the current RPG market- is combat. Fallout 4 enjoyed a total revision to the way Fallout 3 and New Vegas played in order to make it a half decent shooter. Starfield doubled down on those improvements to become a mostly decent shooter. But that's different. The path to making good shooter games is mostly linear and very well paved by the leading shooters of the games industry before them. Call of Duty. Destiny. Wolfenstien. There were models for Bethesda to base themselves after and shoot towards aping. Not so much with fantasy hack and slash,

There are dozens of ways to bring such combat to life and it just so happens that Bethesda have tried a few throughout the Elder Scrolls life-cycle... and none have been really all that good. Arena and Daggerfall had an innovate but quickly depreciating click and drag weapon swinging system that aged worse than the Nazi's before the Ark of the Covenant. Morrowind had a 'hit or miss' calculation system which ran in the background and basically made the early game unbearable and simply failed to account for anything late game- being overall useless. And Oblivion and Skyrim just went for simplified wet-noodle slap systems which got the job done, but never felt satisfying to play. But there's no real excuse for experimentation anymore.

As much of a predictable cliché it might feel to read- fantasy melee combat has largely been solved in the modern age and those plaudits belong to the very successful Souls genre. The tight hit-box, swing and dodge/parry/block foundation presented by Demon Souls presents a tactile and dynamic system of combat which has been remixed and iterated on incessantly over the past half decade without growing tired or style. It is a foundation to base a genre off and honestly should probably expand outwardly. Maybe not to the extent of totally ripping the tactical core out of previous tactical party based RPGs- but I suppose that ship has already sailed seeing the gutted out remains of 'Dragon Age: The Vielgaurd'.

Now of course I'm not saying that The Elder Scrolls VI should be a souls-like, absolutely not! But there are fundamental lessons of control that could be built upon from the basis of how those games play- but iteration is definitely key in this discussion. One of the key-most pillars of how Elder Scrolls games is the fantasy of power which Souls-style games actively work to downplay in the way they play and control- so there are certainly some liberties that would need to be taken on Bethesda's end to make a game like this feel as good as it can. And in that vein, I actually might have an idea of what kind of game they could also learn from- although you're gonna have to bare with me for a second as I explain myself.

So the best third person action games for selling into that extreme power fantasy has to be the Devil May Cry games- for the way they present a challenge of combat mastery with a reward of total combat control. I'm not saying that we should be able to literally juggle our enemies around like putty in Elder Scrolls VI, that would be taking it too far- but there's a level of combat complexity present in Devil May Cry that is achieved with precious little controller real estate. Most of the extreme content that each of the Devil May Cry weapons offer are achieved with two buttons and sticks flicks- and the wealth of combat value they add fuel an entire franchise. I don't expect Elder Scrolls VI to rival the deep thought-out complexity of DMC's best- but capturing some hint of that level of intrinsic combat mastery, combined with a more ground Souls-Like basis, would create a unique vision of gameplay that both fits the Elder Scrolls mission statement and evolves so far beyond the basis to shoot this franchise back into the headlines.

Of course I speaking on supposition and dreams here- but in my mind you're really going to need to shoot big to be competitive in the modern world. Bethesda no longer offer the biggest or most detailed open worlds, they no longer offer the most reactive feeling RPG spaces, they no longer achieve unparalleled world simulation and I'm argue they no longer have the benefit of the doubt to flub their way through despite all that. The next Elder Scrolls need to be competitive in real terms, and I somehow don't expect the company to suddenly bridge that gap with world-tier storytelling or graphical aplomb. Something core has gotta give. And that something has to be Bethesda's lacklustre approach to putting the sword in their fantasy player's hands.

The end

 For now

The lies of D-evelopers.

 Who's telling porkies?

You've probably heard the news. The world has finally be awakened to the existence of the universe's first time traveller by way of a review for Starfield dropping more than two months before the game arrives. Even for those that over charge the ridiculous sum for the 5 days of early access, this is a bit of a premature take denoting that our guy here must be one of the most powerful timeline manipulators ever to enter this realm- and he chose Metacritic to be his first port of call. To be serious for a moment, I actually had no idea that Metacritic was stupid enough to allow reviews for games to be posted before the thing was even out; but I guess manually switching reviews on and off for every single game that has ever existed based on the shifting sands of various release dates would be a monumental moderation conundrum given the sheer unbearable size of the industry. Still, at least they hid the review before long- at least there's someone with keys to the moderation office.

And what does this virginal review say, you ask? Well isn't that just the query, let's see...  oh, it's a 0. Well that's a shame, I was really looking forward to Starfield too! What 's the issues then? "Bethesda- because making games that work out of the box is less important than figuring out all the ways to extract as much money for your bank account as possible. Starfield super special 76 edition includes the expected disappointment. Comes with a shot glass so you can participate in the recurring internet Historian drinking game. Take a shot every time Todd Howard lies. Or don't, you will be dead from alcohol poisoning 5 minutes into the 20+ minute masterpiece highlighting yet another Bethesda disasterpiece" Hmm... strong words that read distinctly as though they're being written by a Twitter user who is currently making use of the side-ways cry-laughing Emoji- the international symbol of cope. But he, because I can safely assume this is a youngish-male who owns a Playstation, does draw on a point I do want to touch on though- the lies of Todd Howard.

Because it is by no means some wild or unexpected take to call Todd Howard a rampant liar who carries a cutting knife specifically for extracting that pound of flesh he's always after from his fans. A base, beggarly finical rouge, incapable of keeping his pinching fingers out of the pockets of those that think the world of Bethesda as he drowns them within a tide of false promises, endless unwanted re-releases and broken disasters that break your console, sleep with your wife, kill your dog and go on to run for office in your local elections as a spoiler candidate with really unclear and disruptive policy promises. And it's a perception that I've always found... odd. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fanboy for anyone in the industry and Todd has certainly had his moments of questionability, but when it comes to the liars who flaunt mistruths about what their games contain, I never really think of Todd.

I think of companies like Ubisoft, when it comes around to some of their most famous game reveals like that for Watch_Dogs. We all know not to get excited for the promises of CGI trailers that merely attempt to 'predict' what a final product will entail, but seeing gameplay should really be a moment to dispel such uncertainties. Yet the Watch_Dogs reveal gameplay is infamous for how badly it oversold the movement, density and visual fidelity of the final game based on world simulations the team weren't even nearly finished creating yet. The same was true for the initial gameplay for Assassin's Creed 3 which made the open-forest sections of the game look wild and untamed and wreathed in gloriously chilling snow blizzards that glitter with the enemies blood. Or 'Ghost Recon: Wildlands' which just straight up presented a heavily scripted gameplay snippet in which the AI reacted in ways it never does in the real game. Running away leading to an exciting chase? Um... Wildlands AI invariably stays in it's assigned area and shoots dumbly until it's dead, trust me I played that game for years.

And what about 'No Man's Sky'? Perhaps the poster child in 'games that actually just lied'. To be fair, the issue with No Man's Sky was a complicated one. The lead of the project wanted it to be the best game he possibly could make it, and that lead him to having broad conversations about concepts they expected to be in the game as though they were already present. He claimed in hindsight that everyone knows about the twisting sands of game development, but his was a mind befuddled with excitement- rewatch all those interviews and actually hear his promises- Playing with others, giant sand worm monsters- none of that was offered with an air of doubt or portent. The man guffawed about how exciting these systems were, how cool it all was to interact with. And of course it runs a little deeper than that, No Man's Sky was in bed with Sony to some degree and I'm sure some pressure must have been applied from that relationship. But if you're looking for excitement dragging out into unintentional mistruths- there's you benchmark.

And then we have Blizzard- famous Blizzard. This is perhaps the company best known for bad faith and intentional lies. Lies about their own trustworthiness and competency as a developer. Lies that Diablo Immortal was going to be fair and equitable, whilst simultaneously courting various Chinese investors about ways they could make it as predatory and pathetic as it ended up being. Or how about Overwatch 2, launching the game hand-in-hand with the pre-launch promise of their dedicated single player mode with hero skill trees and diverse playstyles and all that goodness, all the while knowing they would be winding down those projects but refusing to publicly cancel them because that would dampen their early release perception. And then WOW Classic, meant to invoke the loving sensations of old school World of Warcraft without the overbearing monetisation which sickens old players in the base game. Oh wait, WOW token premium currency ended up landing on the Classic severs. I guess nothing is sacred in those offices.

Or perhaps we can look at lies incarnate: Peter Molyneux. The man of a thousand falsehoods, he too started speaking mostly out of pocket thanks to his excitement and hopes for what the final product could be. He wanted his games to be the best they could be and he spoke as if they were. Then he just got bad at keeping promises. Let's not forget the whole 'Godus' debacle with the member of the public who was meant to be the architect of his new game whilst receiving a wage for their time, only for that deal to completely fall through when Godus itself started falling apart. And now we have his modern grift wherein the man has ripped off the mask and just tried to start a shockingly prototypical crypto-gaming nowhere project where he sells plots of digital lands to braindead crypto-investors who think they're getting in on the ground of something big, not even realising the rug they've happily stepped onto. I guess with the amount of scams that make up the Crypto space, at this point they're used to being grifted.

In comparison to all of those extreme examples, what has our man Todd really lied about? "It just works." in relation to the settlement builder mode of Fallout 4 which was much lauded when the game came out. Was the system perfect, no. But nobody claimed it was. In fact, all we were promised was that the thing would work. "Sixteen times the detail!" Is often parroted with actually no concept of the context at all, because people just hear that description about anything to do with Fallout 76 and make their assumption. He was talking about the rendering draw distance- I can't personally attest to if that is true or not based on my time playing 76, but neither can any of the people who wave that as a weapon to make a vague point about 'Lying Todd'. "See that mountain, you can climb it." I don't even know why this quote is controversial, it's factually true. Any landmass within the borders of Skyrim is scalable, that's just the nature of scale in an Elder Scrolls game. "Fallout 3 had over 200 endings"- is more facetious. I can understand the issue there- Todd was talking about the various different combinations of ending slides in a manner that was either utterly clueless or deliberately misleading for effect, I definitely err towards the later in that instance. "You can play forever." If there's any game for which that's true, it's Skyrim. People are still making content for that game more than 10 years later. All in all, I'd say that Todd has a pretty good track record for being decently stand-up, and the fact that the general consensus is to consider the man one of the most duplicitous in the modern industry- hell, I can't tell if that's an insanely privileged view of the industry or you're just plain lying to yourself! 

Skyrim Anniversary Edition? Really?

 When there's no more space in your back catalogue; the Skyrims will walk the earth.

Okay, I'm not entirely sure how I'm supposed to get past this. I mean as a society, as someone who prides themselves in championing progression in the human race, I cannot fathom a world in which Skyrim will receive another rerelease. I don't know who's worse; is it Rockstar Games or Bethesda? Both have tried to fleece their fans for nearly ten years using the same base software, both are showing no signs of stopping. At least Bethesda pretended that they were working on something else to fill the void, even though at this point I'm convinced that The Elder Scrolls Six is little more than an animated wallpaper for Todd Howard's Macbook. But then in some ways doesn't that make this worse? An even bigger betrayal of trust. They promised their next TES game would be a new one, and they freakin' lied! Bethesda lied, because unbeknownst to us, and spitting in the face of all we hold dear, Skyrim Anniversary Edition is barrelling towards us for a 2021 release. (Good god, no.)

Now let me start by saying that I like Skyrim. Heck, I'll go so far as to say I even love the damn thing. It numbers in my top 10 favourite games of all time, (or at least it did; this announcement might cause quite the shake up) I still consider it the gold standard for open world fantasy games and there's few other titles out there that trigger my full 'roleplaying mode' switch like Skyrim does. When I sit down to play that game, I become a Nord in the frigid northern climates of the reaches. I endure the harsh realities of survival mode, descend into the pantheon against hardy snowy creatures, and persist the heavy debugging process of fixing my 100 mod playthrough. (Actually, 100 mods is a light playthrough for me, I'm usually around 150.) So when I say, nay scream with the fury of Star Platinum's Ora when he threw that one tower in the OVA, (you know the one) that I am sick to death of Skyrim; know it's from a place of utmost authority.

I know Skyrim. Heck, I have it's burlap map on my wall from 10 years ago, I can just about make it out from the dark of a room lit only by my computer screen; because despite learning of this new edition at 2:00 AM I knew I had to get my thoughts down when they were as raw as possible. This is the kind of game I'll think back on in my death bed, whether that be a year away or twenty, because it's impact on my life has been that significant. The way a lot of folk out there think about Baldur's Gate- that's Skyrim for me; a game which defined what it was to Roleplay. And I've finished it. I've finished it countless times. I've finished it with mods. I've finished it vanilla. I've finished it on console. I've finished it on PC. I've finished it Legacy edition and I've finished it in Special Edition. I can't do it anymore. I just can't. For the love of god, Bethesda; GIVE ME SOMETHING NEW TO PLAY! I'm begging you guys, scratching up my knees, wearing down my prayer beads, desperately praying for SOMETHING NEW! ANYTHING! Wait- no I take that back. Not anything- NOT ANYTH-

So the reason that this Anniversary Edition is coming our way is not, as some might have assumed, in order to stick a new engine in it and prolong it's appeal to the new age. Because if Bethesda did that then they'd have to give it to people who already own it for free again, and they ain't skipping out on profits like that again. No, this time Bethesda are giving us what I can only assume is a repackaged version of Special Edition only reloaded with 500 pieces of Creation Club content, and good lord I don't even know how there is that many Creation Club pieces. There was absolutely not that many entries in the store when they retired the system in the wake of the Pandemic. (and not because of the widespread bad press it was constantly generating, warranted or otherwise)

My only guess is that Bethesda are counting each individual item in the various Creation Club mods as their own piece of content, which is technically true, if misleading. Or heck, maybe they've been busy during the year-long hiatus, hiring more contractors to make Creation Club content which they then... didn't sell... for some reason... (I'm sticking with my first explanation for now, it makes more sense) Whatever the case, this is going to be Bethesda's big ploy for justifying selling this Anniversary Edition to people who've already bought the damn game enough to cover Todd Howard's car insurance for the year, like I have. And yes, it's not yet confirmed that this is the case, but I pull up evidence A: This is modern Bethesda we're talking about, that's obviously what they're going to do.

Hmm? That's not true? It's free? No hidden costs? I don't believe you. I don't believe anyone. Moreover, I can't believe you, because if I did than I'd have to accept that there's no good reason on this earth why I shouldn't play it. Even if they slapped a £2 price point on the thing and shoved it at me, that'd be my excuse, but if it's genuinely going to show up in my download list without me having to lift a finger; then that's another Winter of mine sacrificed to Skyrim. You can't do this to me, Bethesda, it isn't right; it's cruel. Moreover, it doesn't even make sense. Isn't the plan to port Skyrim to everything from Last gen to Switch to VR to Alexa? Well, why not phones? Don't tell me that your average phone can't run Legacy Edition of Skyrim because I will insist that you're wrong. Or are Bethesda waiting until next year for Skyrim Mobile Edition? Spreading their growth portfolio out, are they?

To think that currently we're looking at two remasters from the industries most prolific homework copiers, and if rumours are to be believed (and I'm thinking that they are) then Rockstar are actually the guys who have a more interesting offering on their plate. Churning spittings off the rumour-mill are saying that Rockstar are looking to remaster their 3D era of games (III, Vice City, San Andreas) for the new generation, and that sounds genuinely interesting and like it could herald something really special. Meanwhile what can we expect from Anniversary Skyrim? A new update to the graphics to slather onto this aging engine? (I swear to god if my computer can't run the new Skyrim that just might be it for me, I don't think I'll be able to take that humiliation. I might just off myself.) Oh, wait; no they're adding a fishing module into the game... Which I actually want to play... dammit.

I can just see Todd Howard right now, pacing around in his black and white jumpsuit, swirling his cape as he plots. "Oh Anniversary Edition is real all right. Real enough to drag pathetic fans like you back into our active player figures! And we bought you back without ever having to resort to 'making a new game' or 'promising an impending sequel'. You're not getting Elder Scrolls VI, you're not getting Starfield; I'll give you Skyrim. And not just that, I'll give you most spectacular Skyrim you've ever seen, on every device you can access! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell the code for porting Skyrim; so that everyone else can keep porting Skyrim to new systems! Every new Bethesda game will be Skyrim. And when every game's Skyrim..."

"No game will be."

My first time with Skyrim

 Fond memories by the campfire

In the months that lead up to that day, there were certain times where I thought I couldn't breath from the anticipation. Torn up inside by the possibilities of what could, and should, be; I would jump up and down in my seat gripped by the chaos of the excitable and touched with the madness known as hype. Oh, I was a fool back then; hopeless and hopeful, driven by imaginary, conjured desires; all stemming from happenstance for a type of game I wouldn't have blinked twice at just a couple of years previously. How could it be that I had fallen so spectacularly for the promise of fantasy? Sure, I was a fan of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, but I wouldn't march onto Trafalgar Square, dressed as an Uruk-Hai in order to spy the latest movie, but if it were a Skyrim event... I don't know. Perhaps that date had something to do with it; '11/11/11', something almost ordained from poetry, how could you not fall for the whispered magic of a promise like that? Then, on the day of release, I got a detention.

You don't understand how ridiculous that is, at least for someone like me. I never had detentions or the sorts of problems that would lead me to have to spend any longer than was absolutely necessary within the premises of school; but on that day, the day of destiny I had waited so long for, a day where I had pre-ordered for the first time in my life, I had to wait behind. There was almost something sickly appropriate about the whole thing, especially as the issue was ultimately just some wayward homework that had fallen aside in the hustle of the everyday. But I couldn't have asked for a better catalyst to really stew the pot of anticipation and set me off into hot sweats. Obviously I couldn't tell you the work I was tasked to do in order to be released home, because regardless of whatever my hands were doing, by eyes were drowning in a pixel world of imagination. By that point I had watched the E3 gameplay footage to an unhealthy degree, you see, and could quite literally replay the whole thing in my mind and in front of me, so that was what I spent that final hour between me and Skyrim doing. Daydreaming.

Now nine out of ten times you would probably likely see that I'm setting myself up for absolute disaster here. "Dreaming about a game that hasn't hit the market yet? Future Cyberpunk fans would like to have a word with you about 'sanity'". But Skyrim wasn't just any old game. Back when Bethesda was at that sweetspot of small enough to still care and big enough to make the big projects, Skyrim would come to be their Magnum Opus. 'Though the years to follow would be fraught with 'die hards' analysing the minute details and claiming 'Oblivion did this better' and 'Morrowind did that better', at that time it was undeniable that on it's own Skyrim was a beast with the power to rewrite the very standards of the industry. What a fantasy game could be before Skyrim and what it had to become after Skyrim is a vast chasm apart from one another, and I personally think Skyrim lit that ever so gentle RPG spark over the general public, introducing that scourge I call 'light RPG mechanics' across the industry. But what was my experience like? 

Well, rather embarrassingly for someone who let themselves be swept away by the promise of an 'endless world' RPG space with possibilities galore; I ended up playing the exact same way I had seen in all the trailers, footage and gameplay walkthroughs up until then. Yes, I was lured in by the promise of playing however and wherever I wanted to, but in truth I wanted what I had seen already. Sure I could be a mage, a sneaky rogue, any combination of that I could dream up thanks to the adaptive class system, but I didn't want any of that. I saw what I wanted. Which is actually, if I'm being honest, a grand mess-up when it comes to how one should be viewing RPGs. I mean, who's role are you playing? The developers? Where's your personal stakes, the heart of your character, of your adventure? The hook that makes the game last with you far off the screen itself? By all accounts I should have disillusioned myself with the roleplaying world entirely from that misfire experience. Obviously that didn't happen.

If there's thing I remember feeling from those first few moments loading up and playing through 'Skyrim', it was this sense of contentedness, a feeling that my expectations had been met and this was everybit the game I was waiting for. A simple wild perspective given how long and how dearly I had pined for the game, but an advantageous position I suppose when everything was said and done, much better than being disappointed. I remembering playing all the way from Helgen to the first Nordic ruins in the hills above Riverwood, stopping just after the introductions to the traps-system. (I couldn't tell you how giddy I was watching the fire shoot across oil in something approximating realistic spread.) My first experience was, thus, strewn with the giddiness of a schoolboy, because that's all I pretty much was, not the jaded cynic of today. (Ah, the innocence of ignorance.)

In many ways, Skyrim was a watershed moment for myself as a lover of the gaming world as much as it was for the industry and 'open world gaming'. I didn't realise how rare something like Skyrim was, how unnatural it would be for a game of that magnitude to be that untarnished by the whims of corporate decision-making. (Heck, given the many re-releases and extras Bethesda has thrown atop of Skyrim; that's a perspective I haven't even been able to keep either) All I knew was that at that time I learnt that games could create an entire world for you to just inhabit, and I wanted every bit of that. I wanted to explore new worlds from the ground up and live within that, any world and every world. That's probably what spawned my willingness to try almost any genre of game too, I wouldn't want to miss out on some immersive experience that someone else was having. Some in someway, I'm directly blaming Skyrim for my current obsession with CRPGs. (All the pain I suffered during 'Throne of Bhaal' is blood directly on your hands, Todd Howard!)

The proceeding however-many hours which would make up my initial playthrough in Skyrim (obviously nowhere near my last playthrough) resembled the fervour of a hungry kid at a buffet table, because I sampled everything. Sure, that's the way I would come to play every game I ended up loving down the line, but nowdays I make some sort of justification in my head. Why is the Harbinger of the Companions going to join the wizards over at Winterhold as a novice? Well it's actually a mission of faction relations, he 'joined up' with the college merely as a measure of politeness. Why would a soldier of the Empire become an Assassin for the Brotherhood? Well perhaps after finishing the war he became disillusioned with the aimlessness of it all when the real enemy is sitting in the imperial throne consorting with the Dominion. We make these sorts of excuses and reaches of logic for the games that we love. By the end of my playthrough, I had tried everything that Bethesda had to offer. (Which I could find. Surprisingly I missed all of the Aedra quests in my first playthrough.)

We all have those big moments, or products, that influence the way we see things for perhaps the rest of our lives. Maybe it's a book which evolves your perception of written literature, a movie that breaks down the very tenets of the three-act structure before your very eyes, a TV show which deftly crafts the a world more grand than the boldest movies, or a game which makes you forget the world around you completely and utterly. When it comes to gaming I of course have several different moments like that, with different games of different genres, in fact I think I've had an 'eye open' moment with a least one game of every genre I love today. But Skyrim was, and will remain, one of the most special to me. Alongside the first time I discovered Metal Gear or when I finally understood the world of Dark Souls and what it was saying. Alls of which is to say: I should really get around to a proper review of that game one day with all the subjectivity of my jaded modern self, see the ways in which it still stands up and the ways it falls short. Stay tuned.

Umbra: The Sword of Souls

 Ready for a fictional history lesson?

One of my favourite parts of The Elder Scrolls and the way it tells its lore, is the fact way a lot of the very special magical items aren't just imbued with special effects, but also with a living history which evolves and changes from game to game. It's something that I can really appreciate in the wake of all the CRPGs I've played recently, wherein you'll find plenty of named magical items with mostly forgettable effects and paragraphs of meaningless 'lore' attached to them; with stark exception given to the items of lore from Tyranny, because no game nailed 'living legend history' like Tyranny did. Perhaps the epitome of these magically enchanted weapons of legend in the Elder Scrolls universe are the Daedric Artefacts: Items of power tied to, and sometimes created by, one of the powerful Daedric Princes who influence much of the world of Nirn. These are all very unique items, tied with heavy lore, that are famous, no least of all for being collected by perhaps every player character in history; making the legend of their exploits the legend of your own as well.

Everyone has their Daedric artefact which they love the most, the one which speaks to them and their tastes, whether that be for its effect, general aesthetic, or the story written across its surface. For me that weapon is the ever-changing Sword of warfare and shadow, capable of such legendary carnage that most who came to wield it throughout history found their own names overshadowed and lost to its glory. I speak of the weapon of legend: Umbra. A dark purple blade, sometimes a long sword, at others a two handed sword, imbued with the ability to cleave away the very souls of those it fells and, perhaps consequential, always a weapon held in the hands of some nameless slaughterer very willing and confidant to challenge any who think they can claim the weapon for themselves. It's almost like the Elder Wand from Harry Potter, a weapon most feel invincible with, until they encounter that one person who is more deserving of the sword than they. (Spoilers: that person is always you.)

Some may be aware of the weapon but not even know that it is a Daedric Artefact or what significance that fact even has. Indeed, I do believe that in the game it was introduced, Morrowind, there's absolutely no indication whatsoever this is such a tool, and the relevant Daedric Prince who would eventually have it tied to his name didn't even have a questline in that game. (Even though three of his artefacts appeared in the game.) Of course I speak of the Child-god of the Morningstar, Clavicus Vile, the trickster Prince who's entire MO is trying to set people up with deals that ultimately don't go their way. Seems a strange fit, does it not? A Prince who prides themselves with their cerebral tricks and backhanded deals handing out a sword of ultimate destruction? Seems like something you'd expect more out of Molag Bal or Mehrunes Dagon. But look a bit deeper into the history of such a device, and you'll see the signature trademark of the child-god clear as day.

The Sword was created by one Naenra Waerr, (try saying that 5 times fast) a witch who took up the commission to make a sword specifically for Soul Harvesting, because apparently Clavicus Vile is too lazy to just use Soul Trap, one of the most basic conjuration spells. The Witch succeeded, but only barely for the sword she made was unstable and required some form of significant power to bring it under control. (Or at least, that's how one of the stories, the one which makes the most sense to me, goes) The Witch had Clavicus imbue some of his own power into it, only to reveal that she had tricked the great trickster himself! The Sword would siphon off a great deal of Clavicus' power and develop a sort of sentience of it's own, becoming the entity known as Umbra. Thus the reason that everyone who wields this blade becomes a war obsessed psychopath who loses their very identify to the weapon, is because they're becoming quietly possessed by the being inside of it. (There's the trickery I'd expect of ol' Mr Vile.)

In 'The Elder Scrolls III: Oblivion', the latest canonical appearance of Umbra, the Blade can be retrieved for Clavicus Vile as part of his quest line in return for his Masque. (a terrible trade-off by-the-by) Typically Daedric quests are fuelled with this unknowable mystery to them so that it feels as though you're just running around in circles for the amusement of your Daedric benefactors, but this is one of those rare example where we have context. Clavicus is trying to reclaim that part of his power which ran away, and upon returning the sword, Vile tries to keep it within his realm until he can learn how to undo the trick the Witch placed on him. The only reason we know this, and the subsequent events, is through the two quite good extended universe Elder Scrolls Books 'The Infernal City' and 'Lord of Souls'. Two stories I would certainly recommend and some of the only extended universe Elder Scrolls books for some reason. Bethesda should really get to commissioning more.

After the Oblivion Crisis, the spirit within Umbra managed to solidify itself into a body and escape the confines of the Sword in which it was trapped, becoming a sort of shadow off the godling Clavicus Vile. This entity couldn't just leave the realm of his master however, because Vile had personally put safeguards up to tie the thing to his realm a while back. Instead, Umbra ended up siphoning Clavicus Vile's power and running away to claim a city from Vile's realm as his own; dubbing it 'Umbriel'. But that is far from the end of this story. You see, after the events of Morrowind and the destruction of the godly Tribunal, (Either by the Nerevarine destroying their power source or directly slaying the gods ontop of that) the many magical feats of the Tribunal began to fade from the world. One such feat would be the Ministry of Truth; the floating meteor hanging over Vvardenfell's Vicec City which the Tribunal god Vivec had halted on it's route to crushing the place. You can sort of see what problems might arise when he suddenly lost all his powers/ was brutally murdered.

One scientist devised a way to keep the Meteor in the air, through a powerful soul powered machine which required souls and also was a soul eating machine. (Why did anyone think that was a good idea? Why not just relocate?) So grisly connotations aside, the device didn't work and exploded, sending the asteroid careening through Oblivion and eventually into Clavicus Vile's realm. Umbra saw this happening and chucked his sword through the hole in Vile's realm that the ministry created before it could seal up again. This sword, through way of possession, managed to summon up some less-than-willing acolytes to build another soul machine, this one tied to the city of Umbriel and powered by Umbra's stolen fragment of Clavicus Vile's power. (Are you still following me? I feel like I'm barely following myself) The result? Freedom of a sorts, for Umbra and his city. Umbriel would be propelled across the realms of Oblivion as a floating city powered by souls until it eventually wound up in Nirn and almost caused a soul-zombie apocalypse.

Wow. That's a lot of flavour lore around what was originally just a sword with, in all honesty, a rather lacklustre enchantment effect tied to it. Who'd have thought a simple weapon that I had locked in a display case in my Oblivion castle would contain the sentient fragment of a god? Or go on to struggle against said god for supremacy, it just goes to show the real smattering of history some of these fragments of the Elder Scrolls world has. Whilst Umbra's journey may be up for the time being, with the sword being understandably absent from Skyrim, there's plenty of other tools with stories going even further back, if not with two extended universe books dedicated purely to fleshing them out. I'll see which of those is worth a summary blog too.

The Art Worldbuilding: Names

 That's not my name

Welcome to Odarath, North of Ettinmere and just outside of Allestar, all locations within the larger region of Dalentarth. What I just read out to you wasn't a random selection of gibberish, but the actual name of early game locations in the cult role playing game Kingdoms of Amalur. It was whilst playing that very game, and trying to get to grips with why it never hit it off the ground within the role playing community, that I first came up with this topic. (Albeit, a decent while before I ever even tackled topics with a blog to begin with.) Because, you see, the gameplay was very decent in Amalur, the encounters decently cinematic,  the storyline... well it existed. All in all I found the game to just be a more evolved version of Fable, without all of the toothless 'interact with the citizens' garbage which has never once lived up to the promise that those games seem to think it does. And those Fable games were a massive hit so why not Amalur? Well, I'm sure there's a plethora of reasons flying this way and that, with luck being the most prevailing factor (or lack thereof in this game's case) but for me it came down to those names and the concept of immersion.

Immersion is a tricky concept to juggle when it comes to telling a story, through any medium, as it almost becomes this intangible value that everyone can identify once achieved but no one can point it out from a lineup. I suppose the best analogy would be in equating immersion with the storyteller's ability to trick the audience into believing the world, but that makes for a clumsy metaphor when in many ways becoming 'immersed' is like an agreement to give oneself over to the fiction, rather than an unwitting dupe. Thus I can't say I know all the ingredients to the pie, but I do know that it's an important dish to the feast of storytelling and one which I think becomes ever more essential the more fantastical the story in question becomes. When we're talking high fantasy, it's do or die; you either persist long enough to believe and care for this fictional world or come out the otherside unconvinced and utterly uninterested in everything that happens therein. And I think the first step to achieving this all-important immersion is in names.

What is in a name? When you think about it, what we choose to name things, specifically locations, is both incredibly arbitrary and hugely important. Think of the planet on which we exist, Earth, a literal descriptor of the substance which covers the ground, and a whole-sale term for the home of all humanity. It's such a simple name, but a strong and evocative one that has a literally intangible, yet effortlessly imaginable, etymology written upon it's face. When it comes to storytelling I find myself coming back a lot to the name 'Earth', and what it means, it's significance, and have eventually come to the conclusion that it's probably the best name for our planet we can hope to think of. If incessantly narcissistic, but such narcissism drove astrological studies long before we mapped the solar system, so I find it fitting. Simple perfection like that is most likely impossible to replicate in fiction, as fiction requires the active creation of a world and such names are designed to be so obvious they almost defy critical thought, and yet I think the best fictional names at least lean towards that perfection.

Coming back to Amalur for a bit, can you remember any of those names that I listed at the top without scrolling up to look at them? I played the game and I couldn't remember a single one, I had to look it up and then follow up several wiki pages just to remember which place was which. (I don't have Amalur installed and I can't be bothered.) It's hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that's so forgettable about them, they aren't too unpronounceable, they sound real enough, they even have a naming convention to them (With your 'mere' and your 'arth' borrowing from real geography) and yet they totally lack staying power. But if you ask me to name the first town in Skyrim; Riverwood. What about Morrowind? Sedya Neen. (That's something you wouldn't pull up so quickly unless you were a Morrowind die hard) You can see the difference, can't you? But let me try to define it.

A lot of names are actually very mechanical when we go to their roots, deriving meaning from literally describing either what can be found in a location or who can be found there. From there names can evolve and take on new forms that might have entirely new meanings to them or might even morph into something else entirely that sounds like a name. One of my favourite examples of a city from the real world like this is Istanbul. One of the earliest names of that place being Byzantium, seat of the Byzantine empire, through the many years and many changes of rule that title would shift wildly. At one point it was known as Constantinople, in honour of it's patron. At another point in history it was called Islambol, in reverence of the prevailing religion which was so important to it's ethos. Taking that principle to fictional locations, you can see how well it serves in some of the most iconic fantasy names we take for granted. Riverwood sits along a prominent river through the land of Skyrim, King's Landing is the sea-adjacent seat of the king of Westeros, Baldur's Gate is a city with a big gate that was probably founded by some dude named Baldur. (It's actually a little more complicated then that, but you don't need to know that to remember the name.) These are functional names and that makes them comprehensive and easily understandable, allowing your psyche to make note of them, remember them, and then make them believable.

That doesn't mean, of course, that there's no place for exotic names in our Fantasy games. (For what a demandable state of affairs would we be in were that the case?) Just look at the Dwarves from The Elder Scrolls and their naming convention. (Mzinchaleft springs to mind here.) Just try saying that in your head, it's sounds like you're going through a mild seizure. (In fact, the team over at Zenimax have a guy on the lore team who specialises in just pronouncing these things) By all accounts these names are convoluted, abrasive to the tongue, meaningless and should be impossible to remember, and a lot of them absolutely are. The Elder Scrolls manages to make some of these names so ridiculous and adverse to what our brains normally expect to see that we remember the spectacle of the name if not the name itself; but at that point we're almost looking at a parody of a name. It's a name that fits a society like the Elder Scrolls Dwarves, specifically designed to be a mystery that's never resolved, because the moment you make them tangible and have to come to grips with a people who willingly named their grand cities as though they were picking through a bowl alphabetti spaghetti, the fiction starts to unnravel.

I think it's really hard to make a fantasy world that is dependant on these non-conventional names and which people can still latch onto easily, because the very premise of fantasy is already asking a large leap of faith for the audience to begin with. Even as a fan of fantasy, when you present to me a world similar to the one that  Kingdoms of Amalur did, with nothing but names just that hair's breadth outside of convention, I  end up being disengaged. It's a bizarre and lamentable little quirk of immersion, but I justify it by thinking 'why should I take the time to believe in this place that doesn't exist?'. Giving me that reason to care is the entire point of telling a story, and the veil of fiction can be a tough one to pierce if you don't approach it correctly. Of course, it's possible to put so much effort into creating a new culture and way of forming names that even exotic names become believable, but that takes such dedication to world building that it almost becomes unworth the time. I call Lord of the Rings and it's names that range from very strong simple names (Mordor) to whimsical and flighty ones, (Minas Tirith) but through the strength of the world built manages to convince all the same. (Although the books can be pretty dense to pierce through on first read.)

Worldbuilding is an incredible manifestation of effort in storytelling and a tremendous exercise of indulgence and restraint, as, I suppose, are most forms of art. To think that something as simple as a name could serve as that little extra bit of adhesive keeping the edifice standing seems silly, and yet how many times have you looked at some 6 syllable fantasy gibberish word and thought "I'm not awake enough for this crap"? Creating the most approachable and engrossing worldspace is all about meeting the audience halfway, and the best foot forward is in that very first name that they see. So what is the equation? Mechanical names with an instantly identifiable etymology work best, but if want to get a bit more fancy it's helpful to do so in moderation and to always create with that ever present perspective of "If I come to this concept or place as a complete stranger, do I find this engaging and interesting or do I feel turned away at the door?" 

The Elder Scrolls: Dwarves

 Where did they come from, where did they go?

The Elder Scrolls online was a perfect opportunity to expand the world and lore of Elder Scrolls further than it has done ever before, and in many ways that's exactly what they achieved with that game. By the very virtue of being an MMO set earlier than any other piece of media in the franchise, ESO has served as a perfect breeding ground for all sorts of lore snippets forever injected into it's healthy ecosystem. (as it is a rather good MMO nowadays as well.) There's only ever been a few little slip-ups here and there such as how 'The Lusty Argonian Maid' exists within the games files despite the fact you literally meet the author of that play in Morrowind. And he's a normal human, so there's no "Maybe he was alive for hundreds of years" to fall back on. Maybe he totally ripped off the play from some ancient unknown source, but the protagonist is still an obvious crude self-insert of him trying to bone his maid, so I think that's a weak argument. (I guess we'll chalk that up to temporal displacement, I don't know.) But there's one aspect of lore that, as was recent discussed, ESO will never get a chance to touch on, and that's because they've been forbidden. No, it's not the ever interesting eastern land of Akavir, which I would love Elder Scrolls 6 to be secretly based in, but instead the 'mystery' surrounding The Elder Scrolls' Dwarves, and it got me thinking about them myself.

Of course, Dwarves are a fantasy staple present in just about any fantasy setting you can imagine. (I'd joke about how that's a prevailing symptom of systemic ableism, but knowing this industry there's bound to be someone who'll take that too seriously.) Dragon Age, The Witcher, The Forgotten Realms, insert any fantasy franchise you want and no matter how grounded they are there's a good chance the game has dwarves. They all tend to be the same in concept as well, subterranean isolationists who specialise in all things related to minerals and the earth: mining, smithing, general metallurgy; that's always their thing. And yet despite the Elder Scrolls sharing that cliché, I must admit that their take on it is actually one of the most original I've seen across the various quite distinct franchises that I've mentioned. It's surprising to me because as much as I love the Elder Scrolls it does tend to be very clearly influence driven in a lot of manners; but not in the Dwarves.

Known in the lore as Dwemer (Deep Elves), leading off of the naming convention for Elfin races wherein they are some sort of descriptor followed by their species of 'mer', the Dwarves are still subterranean masters of their craft, only these guys fill the role of the mandatory long-missing civilisation for this universe. Every series has their own, the Engwithans, Aen Elle, those of the Elvhenan; traditionally this spot is held by the native-American allegory race, telling of a long lost culture of nature lovers who would live forever, be more moral, and just all round be better than all the scrub cultures who live nowadays. The Dwemer go a different direction, with the Dwarves being merely technologically superior, (and also not actually short in any fashion) but conceptually just as corrupt and backstabby as their modern day counterparts, with the added bonus that their tended to be a civilisations most predisposed towards blatant sacrilege. (They literally made artificial life to be their slave protectors, these guys were hardcore 'playing at god'.)

Where the mystery comes into it, is in the way that the Dwemer actually disappeared from the world, because this isn't your stereotypical story about a society that slowly collapsed after generations of withering fortunes, no the Dwemer's disappearance is much more abrupt than that. It was a disappearance in every sense of the word, in that one day they were there and the next they were not, with no clue left as to how an entire species vanished, where they went or if they can ever return. These are the sorts of mysteries hanging over the Elder Scrolls world ever since after Arena where the team decided that the mentioned-but-not-implemented Dwarves should be more interesting. Diving into this would be unravelling one of the great mysteries of the Elder Scrolls universe, but as Todd Howard himself apparently decreed; such is not the duty of the ESO team to cover.

Except, we do actually know how the Dwarves disappeared. Is this- am I being stupid here? This was covered pretty extensively in Morrowind, but we've just sort of continued like we didn't get a pretty open and shut story told to us. For the sake of those who missed it, the story goes like this. Indoril Nerevar, the Chimer (Dunmer Predecessors) war hero who's life and times are of central importance to the story of Morrowind, really had an issue with Dwarves. Their people were traditionally enemies, but he'd managed to secure a truce through his friendship with their leader King Dumac Dwarf-Orc. The two of them were the best of friends with a relationship so tight it bought warring nations to peace. That was, of course, until the world's bigger Narc, Dagoth Ur, ran to his master Nerevar to report about how his spies had watched the Dwarves chief scientist, Kagrenac, experimenting on the heart of Lorkhan.

Woah, back up a second; okay, so Lorkhan was an Aedric god who created the mortal plane and, in true promethean fashion, was punished for his transgression by having his heart thrown to Nirn. (The impact of which would form the volcano known as 'Red Mountain'.) So this was a sacred and holy artefact that some Dwarf dude, in all the hubris of mortals, had dug up and now was experimenting on. Something about creating a big artificial god with the heart of the Dragon of time or some such nonsense, it's a whole thing. (basically he's responsible for the events of Elder Scrolls 2 indirectly) Messing with such a holy relic tied to creationism is sacrilege, and Nerevar turns to Dumac to have this forcibly stopped. Dumac doesn't believe Nerevar, and the two nations end up at war again. Nerevar and Dagoth Ur manage to storm Red Mountain and Kagrenac's lair, but he has other ideas and tries to tap directly into the Heart of Lorkhan with his tools for some unknown cause. (Perhaps he hoped to be imbued with the power of a god to wipe out their Chimer foes.) In that moment something inexplicable happened, the entire Dwarven race was wiped from the face of existence in the blink of an eye. Where they went, nobody knows, and touching on that mystery is the only real direction this story could go on.

Although, and I loathe to try and interpret Mr Howard's own intentions here, but perhaps the idea is not to delve any deeper into the Dwarves at all, ever. Maybe, just maybe, the plan over at Bethesda is to keep the location of the Dwemer a secret for now and forever, only ever hinted at or teased upon, but never fully explored. I say this because of the commonly held theory that a mystery is often best left unanswered, because the conclusions of the mind will always trump anything the creators could come up with. It's a simple and inelegant solution to one of Elder Scrolls' largest running mysteries, but as this point what other choice does the team have? The Dwemer, in their absence, has been built up to being an entire race of genius-level intellects capable of creating fully autonomous robots that function perfectly generations without maintenance. The only reason to bring them back into the lore at this point would be if The Elder Scrolls were seriously considering a hard jump into the industrial age with factories, powered automobiles and firearms. And whilst that would be cool, I don't know if that would make the best fit for a fantasy world like Nirn.

Ultimately, however, the final decision falls to the creative team for how they want to handle this one. Personally I think it's a tale worth exploring, and there's certainly a way to 'bring back' the Dwemer people as a new race for players to toy around without defying the mystique and grandeur of the disappearance. What about a small colony of exiles getting discovered on some remote realm outside of the traditional purview of the Daedric princes, letting the species join the roster as some super rare special race? (I just want there to be more official Elder Scrolls races, it's pretty dry in that regard so far.) Let me know what your ideas are for the future of the Dwemer in The Elder Scrolls down in the comments: let's self-therapy in a group.

Morrowind: Tribunal Review

Now you face the one true god

The very first time that I played Morrowind, all the way back on the Xbox 360 with the help of Microsoft's ever comprehensive backwards compatibility program, I was unfortunate enough not to get to play the DLCs. This was, of course, because these expansions didn't come with the original game and this was before the age of online stores, so I was stuck pretty much playing Morrowind 1.0. Funny thing about that, Morrowind 1.0 is almost unplayable in the modern age thanks to one huge freakin' omission that the team got right around to mending for the first DLC. It's not so much a mechanical issue, but something which I can only assume was a conscious choice, which exacerbates the already iffy Morrowind combat to being a hurdle for enjoying the game at even a base level. Can you guess what they left out? It was the enemies' health bar. Morrowind 1.0 had no visible enemy health bar. (Nor did it have any way to 'check' enemy health, like old school JRPGs and the 'scan' ability) Not that I'm going to bump up my rating on Tribunal for fixing that, should have been in the game to start with, but I thought that was just a curious titbit share with you. 

So Tribunal gets a bit of a bad reputation for featuring one of the most overly aggressive story hooks of any Bethesda DLC to date, and in the end it doesn't really amount to anything anyway. Basically, from the moment you download the DLC (Or, if you have the Game of the Year Edition, from the moment you start the game) every time you rest for prolonged periods of time you are subject to attacks from The Dark Brotherhood. (Yes, that Dark Brotherhood) They'll interrupt you, lay into you with decently powered gear, and likely brutally murder the unprepared. (Of course, if you beat them then that's some free decent armour to screw with early game balance for you. But Morrowind combat is hardly balanced anyway so who cares?) Still, it's annoying for these guys to harass you constantly with a seemingly endless supply of rookie assassins to disturb your sleep, especially as the Tribunal storyline is specifically geared to be played after the main quest, so you're going to be dealing with hordes of dumb ass Assassin's before you get to track them down and tell them to lay off. (Good thing Bethesda never did that ag- oh wait, 'Dragonborn'.)

Tribunal is so named because the main game only ever has you visit one of the three living gods in Vivec, whereas you but hear of Nerevar's Queen/Wife Almalexia and chief inventor/scientist Sotha Sil. This time you actually get to meet them, and must travel to the mainland in order to so; exciting right? Well prepare to be disappointed off the bat because the Morrowind capital of Mournhold is the only location you get to visit on the Morrowind mainland, so discard all those sightseeing plans you had drawn up. Mournhold consists of 5 outdoor cells all stitched together as different districts of Mournhold, and thus feels strangely regressive when compared against the wideopen nine cantons of Vivec. Whatsmore, one of Morrowind's best explorative features, levitation, is disabled within the city because otherwise you'd be able to see how none of the districts are actually connected and would float into the abyss outside the map. (There's an invisible ceiling stopping you from just jumping up there too)

This would make for a pretty disappointing time if it wasn't for the fact that Mournhold is just so darn beautiful. Using almost entirely new assets, Tribunal manages to take the distinct styles of the various Morrowind families and addendum upon them with this slightly new architectural design philosophy of slopes and sharp corners. (A design style that would later, through The Elder Scrolls Online, become the default of the majority of Morrowind.) Most of the districts themselves feel individual with another personality to them to define the manor area from the market place, or the temple from the royal palace grounds. I also adore the royal guard armour, it's this deeper shade of red that invokes the muted but rich palette of Morrowind proper, it fits in seamlessly. I only came out the whole thing wishing that Mournhold had even more districts to enjoy and that the majority of it's content didn't take place in the sewers, which don't share the level of beauty that the main city does.

Built for high player levels, Mournhold offers a challenge for the endgame characters as they have a new major creature to fight, the goblins. That's right, this is a game that shoves an enemy as standard as goblins in the endgame slot. And they're... numerous at the very least. I don't know, I didn't particularly enjoy cutting through hoards of them, like the main quest will force you to do, and found their presence just a chore to have to do deal with. What is much more interesting, but sadly vastly underutilised, are the clockwork fabricants of Sotha Sil's Clockwork city, wholly unique beings that are mix between organic dinosaur beings and synthetic robots. The series could really use more appearances from these guys, no matter how unlikely that may be.

In narrative I found Tribunal to be actually rather strong, picking up with the themes of political turmoil as governing forces come at odds with one another. For this story you have the Temple headed by a notably headstrong Almalexia against the Royal Morrowind family led by the obviously corrupt Helseth, son of legendary historical figure Queen Barenziah. Their struggle for supremacy over the capital of Morrowind will have you going back and forth seeing the flaws on both the tradionalist temple and the new age Royals, as you come to understand that even without Dagoth Ur peering down everyone's necks, Morrowind is a country completely on the brink of systemic change, not for the better or worse specifically, just for the different.

I genuinely loved the whole 'contrasting rules' aspect of the main Tribunal storyline, even if it served as a bit of a microcosm for the same struggle in the Morrowind main story. In fact, I like it so much that it actually starts to highlight the lack of actual meaningful choices to be made throughout such a campaign. I know I commented the same for Morrowind and said how the lack of such choices don't hurt the story, but this time around I feel they actually do; because the narrative goes to lengths to play a cat and mouse between the Temple and the Court only to have the situation end on a weird sort-of cliffhanger by the end. I won't spoil the ending twist, which I think was decently executed, but it does feel like it leaves the conversation this narrative started mid-sentence, and thus I wanted more. But as a bookend to the entire story of Morrowind, I will agree it serves it's purpose admirably and certainly wouldn't recommend anyone experience that game without this DLC, that'd be missing out completely!

Tribunal is peppered with some cool features here and there to enrich the gameplay, including a whole museum system for turning in your artefacts and actually getting paid for them, as opposed to in the main game where their astronomical prices means you cannot sell them to anyone unless you exploit Creeper or the Mudcrab Merchant. (I will say, however, that I found it extremely insulting that the museum wanted my Boots of Blinding Speed. To think that some believe this game playable without those boots is mind-boggling) Also, having the dungeons be made out of entirely endgame areas for endgame players does sort of circumvent the extreme combat gameplay shortcomings of Morrowind, as you'll be fighting tough enemies who take a bit of a beating and actually hitting them thanks to a decent skill level. (Clever Devs) All around, however, I have to give Tribunal a middling B grade just for missing the potential in both creating a sprawling capital for Morrowind (which was somehow smaller than Vvardenfell's capital) and in resolving it's own narrative in a satisfactory manner. I understand what it was that the writers were going for, with spelling out the impetus for Morrowind's impending new age, but even with the hindsight of knowing where this will lead for the country 19 years after the fact, I still felt unsatisfied. Stick around, however, for next week when I'll cover the second, and final, DLC for Morrowind and perhaps even a little something extra.

Morrowind Review

 "I'm a god. How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating Innocence."

In 2002 we were on the cusp of a whole new generation of gaming, one wherein the power of the home consoles was just beginning to get tested. The Xbox was less than a year old, and was due to receive some of the exclusives that would really set Microsoft apart as the serious new player in the video game market, ready to take on The Playstation 2 and the Nintendo Gamecube. (And the N-Gage, obviously) Of course, they would always have Halo to fall back on, a title of such import to the now popular FPS market that it's likely one of the most influential titles of all time, but there needed to be something more. A title which took a genre strong for those other devs, and proved it could survive on the Xbox too. Thus was the position that would be filled with Bethesda's third entry into The Elder Scrolls Franchise: Morrowind. A role playing game built for a western audience, with it's very own adventure twist on the concept, and which would go on to spawn a whole series of award winning games from there on in.

Morrowind was technically smaller in scope to the previous two Elder Scrolls Games. Arena, which was so ungainly big yet sparsely populated that one who chooses not to use the fast travel system would find themselves walking eventually for up to 10 hours between towns. (That's in real-time by-the-by) Or Daggerfall, which got a lot better with it's world building, both in the physical and narrative sense, but still ended up hefty and too intimidating if you don't know what you're doing. Morrowind toned all of that done into a much more sensibly sized fantasy RPG world that we're used to in today's market, yet with an incredible amount of detail to make up for that. Forging one of the most unique and interesting world spaces that had, or even to this day, has graced the video game world. Influenced by Egyptian mythology, populated by weird chitinous bug monsters, seeped in political intrigue; Morrowind would prove to be an RPG must buy for any with even a passing interest in the genre, and to this day many will attest that it's world has yet to be matched by any other title.

It was also my very first look in the Elder Scrolls world. Which isn't to say that it was the first of them that I played, just that it was the first game that I saw in action when I watched several hours of a playthrough on Youtube. All part of the process of me becoming interested in the fantasy genre which now has me helplessly trapped in it's grip. (I'm currently watching through every single episode of Critical Role. I've got the fantasy bug real bad) Whilst the first fantasy game I would play would be Oblivion, (because Amazon took an extra week to deliver Morrowind) I would associate the blossoming of my fascination forever with that world and end up coming back to that game quite often, although perhaps never often enough. I say this because it was literally only earlier last month that I managed to stick through the game to completion, and thus can convey my thoughts on the complete experience in this review format. So in order to close out the chapter in my life which I'm going to call the genesis of my love for fantasy, please bear with me as I review a 19 year old title. And yes, there will be spoilers. I'm sorry, it's sort of crossed that threshold, you know?

A world unlike any other

First I should start by saying that whilst I very much wanted the raw experience, I did download a few mods because Morrowind is an old game and doesn't quite shake hands with newer systems like it could. Those were just mechanical mods though. The Morrowind Code Patch, with almost all of it's gameplay tweaks turned off; (apart from toggle sneak, because that's just utility anyway)  and the Morrowind Graphics Extender because that was the only way I could get a modern resolution for the game alongside a decent draw distance. (Basically, if you want to play Morrowind in the modern age I'd call both of those must-downloads.) Apart from that, I wanted the unburnished Morrowind experience I remembered from oh so long ago, thus I made my Dark Elf character, Jozen Zaljo, (no prizes for getting the reference) and embarked onto Seyda Neen.

From the get-go Morrowind is so similar, yet so very different from other Role Playing games around it. You start as a prisoner aboard a boat, a classic trope that Elder Scrolls itself has turned into a stable; but then are spit out into a world that, even in 2021 with the advances in software we enjoy, is simply gorgeous. A land of giant mushrooms, ash clouds, towering Silt Striders, eye-less two-legged Guars, floating jellyfish Netches, and so much more. It's a world of surprising colour, even when walking lands mostly tainted with the ash of the island of Vvardenfell's central Volcano, Red Mountain. The Flora and Fungi are perhaps the stars of the show here, blossoming everywhere and often ruling the visual asethetic. The Eastern wizards of the Telvanni even build their huge towers out of this fungi, demonstrating the way in which they can be moulded into the landscape. To this day, Morrowind is sublime to purely explore.

The art of Navigating

And in a manner most familiar to Elder Scrolls players, that's exactly what the game allows you to do; Explore. You are kicked off of the Prison boat and told to meet up with some weirdo in Balmora, but from there you've no real immediate obligations and go whichever way you want to. Explore the nearby caves, full with smugglers and slave pens. Walk along the road, rife with bandits, hostile animals, and a man falling from the sky with three powerfully unique irreplicable scrolls. The world becomes your oyster from that point onwards, and it's here that some folk will simply breakdown without any clue what to do or where to go, a common malady of Open World role playing. Morrowind, however, does sort of exacerbate that issue thanks to a design quirk which would be unimaginable in today's world. Morrowind has no waypoints.

If an NPC needs to send you anywhere, and they often do, than the player is given directions that vary from a simple naming of the house or guild you need to search, to a step by step walkthrough of where on the road you need to turn in order to reach some obscure cave. (I hate that latter one, give me a direction and send me on my way anyday of the week) Of course, nowadays we have the saints over at the Morrowind Wiki to help out the lost straggler (and I would recommend the heck out of their services) but back in the day I would not blame a soul who found this a huge turn off for the game, as Morrowind is vast and built with intricate attention to detail, such to the point where tiny caves can be invisible unless you know that they're there. Only big landmarks show up on the world map and the local map is so zoomed in that you can hardly rely on that to point out entry location you might have walked past. In fact, the reason I stopped playing Morrowind the first time it was because I just couldn't find the Cave of the Incarnate and grew bored of looking. (So use the Wiki, for the love of everything)

Fighting Struggles

Once you have your bearing and can figure your way around the world space, another issue might have cropped up on your journey to Caius Coasades little hovel, the combat. Morrowind features a unique combat system which is a hybrid of Daggerfall's direction based mechanics and a, frankly ill-advised, borrowing of D&D concepts. Morrowind and Arena has a mouse movement system wherein you could hold down the strike button and move your mouse in such a manner to indicate the form of attack, whether it was a stab, slash or strike. (With different weapons responding better to different types of attack) Morrowind borrows this concept, only with the movement of the character introduced into the equation in a slightly awkward way. If you want to stab, you have to physically move the character back or forward whilst pressing the stab button. Slashing requires you to move left or right. You get the picture. It's not the best fighting system, but it's serviceable up until the point you actually hit the target.

I will never know what was going through the mind of the Morrowind developers when they picked this system, but here we go. When you hit the target, a system in the game will calculate the level of your skill with that weapon, influenced by your luck stat, to decide whether or not you actually hit. Think X-Com but on the fly. It's as bad as that sounds. So early levels of the game will consist of you standing in front of enemies and spamming the hit button whilst nothing connects and you just pray your health potions hold out long enough for you to survive. It's a bizarre system, thankfully overshadowed once you get into the late game with about 70 in your respective weapon skill, but that it even needs to be overcome to start with is mind boggling. Not this game's proudest moment by a long shot.

A Powder Keg

Overcome those struggles, however, and you'll be treated to a story wherein you get to delve into the fascinating political machinations of Vvardenfell and it's struggles both inside and out of it's borders. You're very quickly told that the one's who sprung you out of incarceration were the Blades, the mysterious division of secret police for the Empire, and it's thier desire to have you educate yourself on the workings of this part of the world. That's how you learn that Vvardenfell is a province torn between spiritual and political conflicts. You have the Tribunal, the three living gods, Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil, who are the spiritual heads of the primary religion of the land, espoused by the temple. They've been challenged in recent generations by the coming of the Imperials and the introduction of their 'Imperial Cult'; basically consisting of the pantheon we know all too well, the nine divines. But this is only the tip of the conflicts.

You have the general disdain for the influx of 'outlanders' coming to the once sacred lands of Vvdarenfell, rumblings in the Temple as they try to cut down on some 'heretical' cult worshipping's of a long dead Dunmer hero and a dark cloud be hanging over all of it, as a plague of death hangs over the land from the threat of the newly awakened god, Dagoth Ur, sworn enemy of the Tribunal, as his forces gather atop red mountain, held back only by the magical ghost fence constructed around the volcano. Oh, also there's a lot of cliffracers. Like, too many. No one really brings it up, but I think that's an issue that should be looked at, they might be over-breeding, it could cause an ecological collapse if not seen to! All of I'm saying is; wipe out all the cliffracers with prejudice. They deserve it.

To be a blade

Becoming inducted into the Blades yourself actually works as a great narrative tool to have the players go out and interact with this world, and experience its various factions and questlines for yourself. Several points in the main story you are literally told just to go out there and do side quests, which can lead to getting involved in the mages guild, Imperial Legion or Morag Tong, or maybe even all three. Just go whether your curiosity takes you. Turns out being a spy for the Emperor is surprisingly liberating when all you have to do in service is random fetch quests with no context at the beginning. In fact, it even gives you a good chance to explore some of the dungeons under the guise of serving the main plot at which point you really come to terms with Morrowind's interesting dungeon design.

Unlike Skyrim's straightforward dungeons or Oblivion's overly formulaic ones, Morrowind features varied dungeons that either make you turn around on yourself a lot, second guess dead ends, or just miss whole chunks entirely if you forget to look up. Levitate is an incredibly useful spell for Morrowind that really informs a lot of the design and exploration, as some of the best items in the game are hidden just upon a rocky outcrop that you'd never suspect unless you got floating. Standard game design laws now say that every secret alcove of loot must have some form of indicator to lead the players to it, but Morrowind almost tried it's hardest to hide this loot, which is what made it feel more wild and exploratory to discover that which no one else has happened upon for hundreds of years.

Of course, the free life can only last so long and it isn't any time at all until you've been roped into what's going on in the main story, specifically when you're sent to converse with a so-called 'Dissident priest' in the temple; a faction of the temple who believe in a heretical reincarnation story for the ancient Chimer hero Indoril Nerevar. He was a contemporary of the godly tribunal back when they were still mortal, and belief in the legend of his eventual resurrection leads the temple to lose their mind and start sending out death squads, despite the fact that old Morrowind was founded on Ancestor worship. Delve ever deeper with the blades and the hook of the story finally lays on you, as you find out that the reason you were freed from prison in the first place is because you naturally fit the bill to be the reincarnation, or the Nerevarine. (A reference to the early Jewish-Christian concept of the Nazarene)

Some people out there bitterly hate it whenever the protagonist in an RPG is signalled out with something special to them, to do some special task. I always endure it as long as there's little or no talk of fate or destiny, because I think such inherently undermines the tension of the situation. If I'm destined to win, why bother? And yet with the Nerevarine prophecy, and way in which the player fits in, I find myself making an exception to my rule. Because it ticks all the boxes to be poor, and yet I fall for it all the same. Perhaps because there's this layer of political machinations wound in there, where some believe you're a plant from the Empire thrown in here to be their puppet. Or maybe it's just because, there's no real great moment of spiritual awakening for you. There's no point where you close your eyes, get imbued with the memories and strength of the Nerevarine, and have it confirmed beyond a doubt that you are he reborn. Instead, the story plays around with unreliable narrators, and the idea that there might have been several 'Nerevarines' over the years, and the completion of his ascension is the only real 'proof' there could be. What does it even mean to be the Nerevarine? Do you posses his soul, mimick his movements, shadow his footsteps? Heck, you don't even have to play as a man or a Dark Elf, and none of the Tribunal instantly recognise you, so I guess you don't look like him. It's left up to interpretation, and I appreciate that level of trust in the audience that isn't usually extended in Western fantasy.

The Incarnate

Another fun side of this story is the way in which everyone disagrees with what exactly it is that the Nerevarine is 'destined' to do. The temple believe he has returned in order to find and defeat his old advisor, Dagoth Ur, and save Vvardenfell from his curse, whilst the nomadic Velothi tribes think he's here to overthrow the Tribunal 'false' gods and restore the ancestor worship of old. Most seem to agree, at least, that he's on a path to kick all the outlanders out of Vvardenfell, despite him being an outlander himself. (As is revealed in a lost section of the prophecy that you have to rediscover) It's a curiously xenophobic addendum to his legend and reflects this isolationism theme to the game which is quite unique in fantasy, or at least unique in the way it's championed. Because of the total immersion element of Elder Scrolls games and RPGs in that ilk, they can get away with plot points like that which don't feel like personal political injections, but just unburnished displays of who these people are and how they act. Typical fantasy games would use such as an opportunity to wag their finger and tell us how we should be accepting, but Morrowind almost comically gives no heed to that and, again, trusts it's audience to reach their own conclusions about whether Morrowind society is killing itself through xenophobia.

Going through the long process of becoming the Nerevarine does mean one thing, however, that you are destined to battle Dagoth Ur atop Red Mountain, and I simply love the way the game imparts the rising tension of this inevitable duel as you go about the duty of winning every major Morrowind faction's support. It starts with dreams that wrack you throughout the night, and extends to 'dreamers' (brianwashed servants of Dagoth Ur) stopping you in the street to proclaim His word. Eventually you'll start getting attacked by Ash Servants whilst resting, and people will talk about the rise in corpus plague cases across the land, letting you know that the situation is escalating without needing any grand showcase moment that would have been impossible with the hardware. Not to say I like this approach specifically better than how Oblivion and Skyrim handle it, I like them both just the same, it's just nice to see the same effect achieved through different means. 

I am a God

Eventually the moment arrives and you are tipped to face the shirtless man himself, Dagoth Ur, and can I say I love how he's become one of the most iconic villains of the series? It's so fitting. He doesn't need to show up throughout and taunt you like some of the others, he just waits under Red Mountain, for you, the Nerevarine. His plan to overthrow the empire and secure Morrowind's border isn't even that much adverse to your own destiny, meaning this isn't even a battle of right vs wrong. In a way, this is literally just Nerevar fixing the mistake he made in his first life; letting Dagoth Ur and his former friends steal the power of the Heart of Lorkhan to make themselves gods. He failed to stop them, and now he's here to rebalance nature. There's never really a question of doing what's right for Morrowind, as Elder Scrolls hasn't really ever had the luxury of multiple choice endings, and in a way I actually respect that rigidity; it rings with a universal truth that it doesn't matter what good the Tribunal has done, their power is stolen through sacrilege, and the ends do not justify the means. (Also, supplanting your people's religion with a dictatorship worship of you and your friends is a bit dodgy, let's be fair.)

Dagoth Ur is- well, what can I say: he's an icon. One of the few heavily voiced character's in the game, (most dialogue is written text) he literally calls out to you through your assault on Red Mountain in order to bid you to his side. "Come to me, Sweet Nerevar.", "Come through fire and war". His dialogue is just so delicious as well, dripping with this sincere pomposity that you just can't help but love. There's one moment, one which will live on in legend for me, where you meet with him and slay him in single combat, only to enter the chamber of the heart and see that he was tricking you, he's immortal. Any other villain out there would wax lyrical about how you're naive, and Dagoth Ur does go there, but he's so delightfully- himself about the whole thing. "What a fool you are! I'm a god. How can you kill a god, what a grand and intoxicating innocence. How could you be so Naïve?" 

Who says that? A "Grand and Intoxicating innocence"! It's just simply brilliant, cheesy to the point of wrapping around and becomes badass again. It's only a shame that the actual fight itself is really straight forward, with no real frills beyond the place where you fight being a grand chamber under a volcano, which is admittedly pretty cool. There is a slight 'Seath the Scaleless' side to the battle where Dagoth Ur cannot be killed until the source of his power, The Heart of Lorkhan, is destroyed, but apart from that there's nothing crazy special about the battle, which is a bit of a shame. I'll still remember the fight fondly though, for the set piece alone if not also for the enigmatic would-be warlord himself.

Future instalments would paint the legacy of Morrowind's hero in a curiously dark light, too, with his destiny of driving outlanders from Morrowind actually panning out. The defeat of Dagoth Ur, through the destruction of the heart, drains the divine power of the Tribunal too ('a necessary evil' in Vivec's eyes) and thus leads to their eventual withdrawal from the world to die as mortals. However, seeing as how among Vivec's many godly accomplishments was the halting of a meteorite over his home city, you can imagine what him losing his powers might result in. Skyrim reveals that years after the events of Morrowind this meteor would end up crashing into the city of Vivec, wiping it out and setting off Red Mountain. The resulting lava and ash would render Vvardenfell and large swathes of the Morrowind mainland uninhabitable leading to a mass exodus. Meaning the Nerevarine didn't just clean Vvardenfell of outlanders, but of all life. What a devilishly twisted legacy for the incarnate.

The road most travelled

How could I finish up without touching on the music? Simple, I can't. The Elder Scrolls have never been strangers to fantastic musical scores that stand out above others in their genre with identifiable grace and personality. Morrowind is no different, with it's classic take on The Elder Scrolls fanfare being a deeply personal and reminiscent jaunt for me. There's no heavy trumpets and loud choirs, but a wood flute, tuneful and rustic. Again, I'm not musically trained in any fashion so I find it hard to really express how a piece of music speaks to me aside from talking about how it makes me feel, and in that vein I always felt the soul of the nomadic Veloth tribes in the Morrowind theme. It's incidental music is similarly iconic and peppered with plenty of fun adventure-inciting phrases, and if we're to judge the soundtrack of this game against that of the always spectacular Elder Scrolls series soundtracks, I'd have to call Morrowind an incredibly close second favourite. It doesn't even come down to skill, but personal preference. Still Morrowind's soundtrack in one of the best, plain and simple.

Summary

In narrative I'll attest that Morrowind has yet to be matched from it's successors, presenting a tale that effortlessly weighed up political and spiritual angles, mashed them together and came out the otherside looking pristine; that's just stylish. My only gripes would be that ultimately there was no real choice for how the main story would play out, which I think would have had a definite place in a story like this. However, considering this game came out in 2002 and stories like that weren't exactly expected from games, it seems unfair to judge that specific aspect by today's standards. Afterall, the resulting narrative doesn't exactly suffer from a straightforward path and the natural freedoms of Morrowind means you can choose to frame your actions however you wish, so is there any real problem here?

The world building, similarly, is world class and would set the standard for Bethesda forevermore. The level of quality that Bethesda is forced to hit with each one of their games on this standard is owed directly to the supremacy of Morrowind. This game's exploration is one of my favourite out of any action adventure RPG, easily better than subsequent Elder Scrolls games, and if only navigation wasn't such a pain I'd be honestly surprised why Morrowind's method isn't the gold standard for the industry. We need more fantasy spaces as unafraid to be original as Morrowind's Vvardenfell was.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is the letdown of Morrowind, where the title really does show it's wrinkles and cracks. Plenty of mods have been made to fix it's issues, but if we're judging this game for what it is then we have to own up to this grandest of failures. Personally the game really picked up once skills became more reliable, but by that point you've usually levelled to a point where most of the game's content isn't a trouble for you anyway, so the content of the vanilla game, at least, is either frustrating or a breeze, with no perfect middle ground. No one's really going to be coming back to Morrowind for the combat, at the end of the day, and that's a genuine failing.

Ultimately, Morrowind still stands out as one of the best examples of how to nail fantasy, and many modern titles could learn entire volumes from it. Most of it's shortcomings in 2021 are due more to it's age rather than missteps (apart from combat) and those with the mindset to look past them will be genuinely shocked by the level of quality and beauty behind them. Coming back to this game was an absolute blast, and reminded me why I love the Elder Scrolls series after I was really starting to come to question that. (I've played over 108 hours in the past two weeks, the games gotta be doing something right) Of course, I've talked about only the main game here, and that's because I want to touch on the expansions and other elements in smaller mini reviews. But as for the maingame of Morrowind, I have to slap a heavy recommend onto this review with a B+ Grade, short of any of the two higher grades simply because a let down in gameplay is a pretty serious infraction when we're talking about a game. But when the grade still hits that high regardless, you know those other elements do some serious heavily lifting to make up the difference, and I wouldn't suggest missing out on all the brilliance of Morrowind for anything in the world. For less than $15 on Steam, there is no excuse not play one of Bethesda's best right now. So don't miss out, or you'll forever be just another N'wah!