I missed the boat on Morrowind when it first released in 2002. My first exposure to The Elder Scrolls was with Oblivion when, in 2006, I wandered into my local Tesco, thought the back of the game case looked interesting, and then proceeded to lose the next few months of my life to the land of Cyrodiil. By the time I went back to attempt to experience Morrowind, I’d become too invested in Oblivion’s systems and visuals, and wasn’t strong enough to look past the dated exterior on show. Thankfully, The Elder Scrolls Online has recently released an expansion focused solely on Vvardenfell, which gives me the chance to at least experience a little of what the fuss was all about.
When I played The Elder Scrolls Online last year, around the time of the One Tamriel update, I found myself disappointed by the lack of a feeling of life in the world, and the fact that the combat following the introduction of One Tamriel had become bland and repetitive. With the introduction of Morrowind, the first expansion since One Tamriel, I was willing to give the game a second chance, seeing as how the developers would now be able to create an experience designed around the updated gameplay systems, rather than changing existing assets to allow the update to work.
I find it encouraging that Morrowind is open to every Elder Scrolls Online player, either high or low level, with the added option of new or returning players being able to start an entirely new character in the Morrowind region, before going on to explore the rest of Tamriel afterwards. Enemies auto-level to match you, and the general experience appears to be the same regardless of how much of the game you’ve already played. Unfortunately, this attempt to please everybody has brought back the issues I experienced with the core game, in that everywhere feels exactly the same and aside from progressing through a narrative, there’s no feeling of ever getting closer to your goals.
There’s no real sense of threat in a particular area, and there’s similarly no sense of your character being all-powerful. Every enemy encounter feels almost identical, to the point where I would often zone-out in combat, pressing the same series of buttons over and over until the enemy was defeated. The Elder Scrolls series has never been known for having depth to its combat, but this one-size-fits-all approach to the experience reduces each and every battle to a tedious slog of button-mashing.
The main thing that encouraged me to keep going throughout Morrowind, at least for the first few hours, was a combination of the primary narrative and the aesthetic. Visually, Morrowind resembles a tradition RPG setting with a dash of ancient Central American architecture and a hint of Half Life’s Xen. Vivec City, where players will likely spend a fair chunk of their time, is full of buildings under construction that resemble pyramids, and the giant mushrooms and Silt Striders located around the map create an alien atmosphere that feels truly unique. The main narrative acts almost as a guide tour around the island of Vvardenfell, encouraging you to visit each of its regions, which range from lush greenery to harsh lava fields. While the environments are attractive and varied, they unfortunately serve as a backdrop to a world that feels far from alive.
I found that outside of the main quest, and away from a couple of the more interesting characters, such as the vigilante Scarlet Judge, Morrowind followed the larger pattern of The Elder Scrolls Online in feeling like an experience that asks you to go from Point-A to Point-B and back again, merely for the sake of giving you something to kill your time with. I never really felt engaged with any of the characters or what they were asking me to do, and I found that there wasn’t much excuse to do anything in Morrowind outside of the quests. With combat as dull as it is, and the lack of spontaneity in the playing experience, Morrowind generally feels flat and lifeless.
Throughout my entire experience with The Elder Scrolls Online, and continuing with Morrowind, I’ve found myself consistently coming away from each session with the game filled with a sense of apathy. It’s not that ESO is a bad game, or an unpleasant experience; it’s more of the fact that it’s just dull. The stories it attempts to tell aren’t strong enough to drag players through the lifeless world, and the world isn’t exciting enough to encourage players to hang around once they’ve finished with the story.
It’s an entirely forgettable experience, and for a franchise with such interesting world design and a penchant for creating a sense of place, its incredibly frustrating that The Elder Scrolls Online and by extension, Morrowind, feels so anonymous. If you’re looking for a time sink, Morrowind is a large addition to an already huge game, but the experiences on offer are too mind-numbingly boring for me to want to continue with them.
