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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (2002)

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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind is an open world fantasy role-playing video game developed by Bethesda Game Studios, and published by Bethesda Softworks and Ubisoft. It was released in 2002 for Microsoft Windows and the Xbox.


Morrowind begins with the player's character, having been imprisoned, arriving in Morrowind by boat in order to be pardoned. This is a common introductory segment throughout the main installments of the series. A well-received tutorial depicting the prisoner's release moves the player through the process of character creation. The player is successively asked questions by a fellow prisoner, an officer, and a bureaucrat as the player is registered as a free citizen; choosing, in the process, the player character's name, race, gender, class, and birthsign. These affect the player's starting attributes, skills, and abilities. The player then determines their class in one of three ways.

The player character's proficiency with a skill is increased either by practice, training or study. Practice involves performing the specific actions associated with a given skill, which gradually raises the character's proficiency in that skill. Raising weapon skills requires striking an enemy with the appropriate weapon; raising armor skills requires being struck while wearing the appropriate type of armor; etc. Training involves paying cash to NPCs in exchange for immediate proficiency increases in that skill. Study requires reading books found in the game, some of which will immediately raise a skill when read. Weaponry skills (viz. Short Blade, Long Blade, Axe, Spear, etc.) affect the character's chance to hit. Armor skills (viz. Heavy Armor, Light Armor, Unarmored, etc.) affect the defensive strength of the armor. Other skills (viz. Alchemy, Athletics and Security) affect proficiency at other actions such as potion-making, running, lockpicking, etc.

The player levels up their character by gaining levels in ten pre-determined skills, listed as "major" and "minor" skills. Each time the player levels up their character, they can select three attributes to augment as well. The player is better able to augment attributes related to their skill set, as each level gained in a particular skill adds to the multiplier by which the attribute is augmented.

In combat the simplest melee attack is a chop action. The slightly more complex slash and thrust attacks are performed by clicking in unison with tapping a directional key, though by turning on the "always use best attack" option, players can eliminate the moving element, freeing them to focus on the combat. A melee weapon's damage potential is rated for each of these attacks. Reviewers found little value in choosing between the three types of attacks for most weapons, and recommended the "always use best attack" option. Hidden arithmetic modifiers, applied to each combatant's skills, determines whether or not the attack hits. In the game's original release, the player was given no indication of the amount of health left in their enemies, and no indication of the strength of the player's attacks. Reviewers took the absence badly, wishing for more visible feedback. Bethesda eventually added enemy health bars in patch 1.1.0605, released one month after Morrowind's initial publication.

Morrowind, following the tradition established by its predecessors in The Elder Scrolls series, attempts to establish a completely free-form world, with few constricting boundaries on the player's actions. From the beginning of the game, players are put in a world where they are left to roam, steal, quest and explore, without necessarily following the main quest. Lead Designer Ken Rolston, asked prior to Morrowind's release what he thought were the "core, untouchable design elements" of the Elder Scrolls series which "set them apart from other games", responded immediately: "Free-form experience."In Rolston's view, the game's central plot is a chance to introduce the player to a cross-current of conflicting factions, background themes, and to the characters of the game, rather than the primary focus of the player's experience. "Every TES game has to let you create the kind of character you want, and then do the things you want. We would never have a TES RPG force you to be a certain character or go down a certain path."

Morrowind's soundtrack was composed by Jeremy Soule, a video game composer whose previous soundtracks for Total Annihilation and Icewind Dale had earned some acclaim from the gaming press. In a Bethesda press release, Soule stated that the "epic quality" of the Elder Scrolls series was "particularly compatible with the grand, orchestral style of music" that Soule enjoys composing "the most".


Source:Wikipedia