Retro gaming: Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind

With all the fuss over Skyrim, it'd be easy to forget that it is the fifth in a well respected series of games. Not having had much of a chance to play the previous game, Oblivion, my yardstick for the review was the game before that, Morrowind. So how does this nine year-old game stack up against its new brother?

Well it'll make a much smaller dent in your wallet. The Game of the Year edition can be bought on Steam for just £12 (it was on offer at £6.49 at time of writing). There's no point buying any other version (small aside: not least because it gives access to some extra cash early on, which is a big help to new characters). There have been regular deals recently to promote Skyrim, so you may be able to get it even cheaper.

The game starts much like Skyrim. Your character is a nameless prisoner, released without explanation by order of the Emperor. A series of conversations define race, name and finally the kind of character (class) you would like to play. This is the first big difference with Skyrim.

The choice of class defines which skills improve the fastest and determine when you reach a new level. Skyrim counts all skills as equal and while it is in theory possible to change your style of play in Morrowind from, say, a stealth to a magic based character it'll take longer. Then again there are no perks to assign to skills that will get wasted in Skyrim.

I happen to think that the graphics hold up fairly well in Morrowind. Granted the non-player characters look a little blocky but there are some pleasant water effects and even integrated graphics can handle the highest graphics settings. I tested on an Intel Core Duo with G45 graphics and was able to set everything as high as possible.

The biggest disappointment with the graphics is that there are no widescreen resolutions so the game has to be played in a window or horizontally stretched widescreen. There also seems to be an overall bias towards the colour brown. It's not a big problem but I suppose the sepia effect fits with the concept of a retro game.

Controls are as straightforward as Skyrim. The use of E to jump and space to activate is the reverse of Skyrim and does lead to some confusion if you are playing both games at the same time. Having read about the dire effects of messing with the keys in Skyrim, I'd suggest changing Morrowind. The shortcuts are actually easier in Morrowind. You can assign items, weapons or spells to the number keys and use them to switch immediately. Skyrim forces you to mark items as favourites and then select them from a list that needs pruning to stop it from getting too bug.

I'd even go so far as to say that the interface in Morrowind is better than Skyrim, although I'm not the first. The information windows can be resized and rearranged to suit your personal style and they feel a lot more informative than Skyrim. The 'perks tree' in Skyrim is particulary annoying to try and navigate. I plan which perks to select using the lists on the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages website rather than do this in the game.

There are some tools in Skyrim that I miss as there is no way to mark places on the in-game map making navigation tricky at times.

The storyline of Morrowind is no less ambitious than Skyrim but it does take a little while to get going. This is claimed to be under the auspices of your character creating a cover story while they secretly work for an organisation known as the Blades. In some respects it's better than having to go off and improve your character just because missions are too hard but the delay in things getting going could put some off. Thankfully there are plenty of guilds to join and they all have their own stories

As already noted, the character options are a lot more complicated in Morrowind than they are in Skyrim. All the available skills are listed on the character information window along with your progress towards the next level.

The problem with all this information is that it's very tempting to start exploiting the way that skills and character attributes work. To explain (though you might want to turn away if you don't want to do this yourself): the character levels-up after 10 skill increases in you major or minor skills. At each level up you get to choose three out of the 8 attributes to improve such as endurance or wisdom.

The attribute gains can be boosted if you have improved a certain number of skills based on that attribute. With so many skills there are normally several that can be raised quite cheaply. If you're canny and have a bit of money it's possible to get the maximum levels in attributes without too much difficulty.

Oh yes, and money. The economy in Morrowind is a little broken as well. The problem is that after a while it becomes difficult to find shopkeepers with enough money to buy loot. Sometimes some fairly complicated buying and selling is required to get rid of an item. There are a couple of secret characters who not only have plenty of money but buy and sell at cost. That won't help your merchant skill but that doesn't really matter when you have more money than you need.

These problems aside, I still strongly recommend Morrowind as it offers lots of gameplay (three years of lunch hours and still not finished in my case) with a strong plot and character development.