The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Does it hold up?

Water! I loved that my fancy 3DFX card could show water where the surface actually moved when you walked through it. It was very fancy. Overall, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was a completely new experience when I played it at the start of the new millennium. I wasn't as good at English as I became after six years of school, majoring in the subject, so I had a hard time keeping up. However, the world was amazing to explore and I loved the strange island of Vvardenfell. I eventually managed to get through the long story and loved most of the game, even though the mechanics were difficult to grasp and the graphics, even back then, were slightly lacking. Today, it is still considered one of Bethesda's absolute classics and will always have a place in my heart. But the question remains as to how it would feel to start it today if you've never played it before.

For the sake of transparency, I'll just say that I've played Morrowind with a lot of mods, and I've done this to make it a little easier to approach, which Bethesda games tend to lack in the original version. This is also how I would recommend others to approach Morrowind.

The story in Morrowind, for a modern game, is not that easy to follow. There's a lot of reading in conversation menus that don't quite make sense. It's just as opaque as it was back then. There are several mods that address this, but I still find the system very unmanageable and it still hinders my positive experience with the game. There are fan-made mods coming to the game that I'm really looking forward to, as the conversations are voiced much more than they were in the original, which will make the game more accessible.

If you dig through the many conversation boxes, there's a fascinating story beneath the surface. You play as an unknown prisoner who arrives in the city of Seyda Neen, where you are told to contact Caius Cossades after the Emperor has released you on suspicion of being the legendary Nerevarine. He is in Balomora, a large city in the southern part of Morrowind. He then sets one off to tell you about the evil Dagoth Ur and his plan to infect the island with the Corprus disease. There is much more to the story, and it is, in my opinion, the best story of any of the five Elder Scrolls games. It's mysterious, exciting and you really feel like there are important things at stake. The story is just as exciting now as it was back then, even if it was quite difficult to navigate, but just like in the early 00s, it was worth the effort. As well as the main story, there are also two very large expansions to the game, called Tribunal and Bloodmoon, so there's plenty to get your hands on if you want to experience storytelling at Bethesda's best.

However, The Elder Scroll III: Morrowind's greatest strength, like all Bethesda games, is its open world. Morrowind is a strange place with giant mushrooms, interesting architecture and creatures you don't see anywhere else in the Elder Scrolls world. The island has barren areas that feel lonely, but at the same time chaotic as there is always something to do. There's always a ruin that looks intriguing, a cave where there's a mystery to be solved, or the very mysterious Dwemer who have disappeared and left behind robots that are very enigmatic and quite violent. I love Morrowind in terms of exploration, and I do in all of Bethesda's role-playing games. Morrowind is just something special, mostly because it's so unpolished and different from its sequels, which gives the game a very special feel that disappears more and more as the series and Bethesda's games become more streamlined. I hope Starfield captures some of this madness, as it's new uncharted territory for Bethesda. It's going to be exciting.

When I say unpolished, I mean it. Morrowind is ugly! It always has been. The characters look angular and clunky, the cities are brown and boring, and many of the areas are not particularly lush, consisting of black rocks and grey soil. Some of the areas have sandstorms, which are brown carpets that reduce visibility. It's all a bit boring, but it also makes the colours that are there stand out more. However, there are also areas that are more lush and where you meet these blue jellyfish-like creatures called Netch's and they still look amazing. So there are ups and downs when travelling around the volcanic land.

If, like me, you choose to go to Nexus Mods to update the graphics, you can change the look of the game enormously. There are thousands of mods that have been created over the 20 years the game has been around. I found a total conversion that added 200 mods and made the game more colourful and softer to look at. However, the game is still 20 years old and you can't polish away some of the rubbish, but it can change the feel of the game quite a bit. I didn't use these mods, but rather went for modifications that made the game less edgy, and these can fix a lot of things that annoyed me. The magic system, for example, is not straightforward, and with mods it becomes a bit more manageable. Enchanting and Alchemy can also be made a little easier with mods, and all the things I personally struggled with I've streamlined, and it makes the game better for me, with the enjoyment of the game's strengths more in focus.

One of the best things about Morrowind is the music, which is composed by Jeremy Soule. There's not a lot of music in the game, and as you run through the world, the music will be very minimalistic, but also very atmospheric. Then there's the theme for Morrowind, which you can find versions of in the subsequent games in the series, and Morrowind has the best version in my opinion. I love the quiet and later bombastic intro to the game, which is just fantastic, but there are also many compositions in the game that will stay with you after playing Morrowind. 20 years later, I still love running around with these pieces of music in my ears.

So does Morrowind hold up? Yes, I think so. The game shows its age and has some really sharp edges, but if you give it time, it will open up and become the legendary game it is. Mods can then be added to sand those edges down a bit.