Morrowind IS the RPG equivalent of Halo for the Xbox.
The game of the year edition of Morrowind for the Xbox in a must-buy for any player of the original. In fact, it’s a must-buy for anyone who owns an Xbox and can handle an RPG. While the system hasn’t been updated (the graphics, audio, etc. have not been touched), the newer version is packed with piles of new content. That means two new, huge areas to explore, and several helpful game play adjustments, plus new weapons and armor for both expansions.
The GOTY Edition contains the original content, plus the PC expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon. If you truly play each and every quest, or explore each and every new dungeon, you will get a good 150-250+ hours of new content, in addition to the original stuff. Even the most hard-core gamer will need a few days of straight playing to complete this massive adventure.
In one area, the frozen northern island of Solstheim, after pursuing the main quests for a while, you have the choice to become a werewolf. This isn’t as good as it sounds, though; those who have already finished the main game, as this advanced expansion is targeted to, will find this monotonous and irritating. The speed is picked up once you change to your other form, but you now take MUCH more damage and cannot heal yourself until daybreak. Plus, if you don’t kill some person, your health begins to drain away; killing beasts does not count. If you enter a town to feed, every single guard goes after you, and they just don’t stop. You may end up killing someone important or scattering people all over the countryside. If anyone catches you changing, you will be shunned from society completely unless you cure your disease. The main quests are also very, very difficult towards the end. My character, toting the Tribunal’s Helseth’s Signet Ring (the new Robe of St. Roris) and a shield that constantly heals nine points of health, still died multiple times. You’ll find yourself surrounded by four or five werewolves that do 50-or-so damage each hit.
In addition to the main quests, the Bloodmoon expansion pack also includes an interesting faction quest series in which you develop a colony by making key decisions and guarding the construction site. You will get to choose if you want a smith or a trader at the site, and, later on, where you want your new estate to be. There are also many side-quests. You can become the chief of a mead hall, or sort out a drug ring involving a Santa Claus wanna-be. There are also several new sets of armor: Nordic Mail, Snow Wolf, Snow Bear, and Ice. You face dozens of new enemies, from vicious Ice Giants to seal-like Horkers, to top it all off.
The Tribunal expansion, in my opinion, was the better of the two. You are introduced to the capital of Morrowind, the walled city of Mournhold. Here you are delved into local politics, either by sorting out the disputes of the semi-crooked King Helseth or doing the bidding of the mad god Almalexia. You must foil assassination attempts, defend the city from mysterious attackers, and shut down an uprising cult hinting about portals opening into Oblivion . . . *hint*Elder Scrolls IV*hint*. Eventually, you must fight a god in the clockwork city of Sotha Sil. Before departing Mournhold, I recommend you kill King Helseth to receive his amazing signet ring.
Also in Tribunal, you fight a Goblin army, the deadly Black Dart gang, and solve the assassination attempt on your own life by the Dark Brotherhood. Or, you can save the city from a plague spread by rats (sound familiar, anyone?), realize your full acting potential, or play match-maker. If you are a real fighter, you can challenge the city’s uber-powerful High Ordinators by wearing their own armor (warning: once you do this, they’ll never stop attacking).
There are also a few new features to note. There is a bar just over your three that marks your opponent’s health, which helps to tell whether you have landed a powerful hit or have a long, long way to go. Many more enemies have reflect powers to send your own magic back at yourself, making battle much more difficult. You may not be able to sort your journal, which will be around 200-400 pages long by the end of the game, like the computer version, but you can look up some topics by hitting the A button. Allies you escort, thankfully, move quite a bit faster; this comes in handy when you have hired a mercenary, which you can now do. You can share your stuff with him; dress him up, give him potions, enchant his armor, etc. Unfortunately, I haven’t discovered a way to bring him with me back to the main island. The music hasn’t changed, and I mean, it really hasn’t changed. While the track may repeat, this never seems to become a problem.
There are a few technical problems, including very long loading times to enter the game and annoying area loading times when you move around, though these really only get annoying once you’ve populated the game with dropped items (objects never go away unless you deposit them in a disposable corpse) and/or gotten very fast, like if you glitch or are using Helseth’s signet ring and the Boots of Blinding Speed. Later on, the game starting freezing quite a lot as I summoned allies, so you should always save before entering an area with a lot of particle effects.
Many players will be put off by Morrowind’s massively wide-open game play. The fatigue feature and the distance you must move to get anywhere may cause impatience to damage this amazing experience. This is no run-and-gun action game. The plot moves along slowly, but those who quickly try to finish the main quests will miss out on the most fun parts of the game. For anyone patient enough the complete the game will find it very rewarding and very, very fun.