Was Morrowind as good as I remember? - A look at the game's mechanics and storytelling

Morrowind is a game that's name alone tends to flood most people's minds with the imagery of a time in the distant past where one could lose themselves in an immersive world filled with mystery and adventure for those who grew up with it and played the game extensively morrowind is oftentimes viewed as a complex game that was one of the last of its kind to let a player explore and pay attention to the smaller details for maximum enjoyment in this day and age the vast majority of new releases tend to be very direct with how to proceed in the game and I'd be lying if I said I didn't appreciate that with how short of an attention span I have still there's something that feels really good about going back to that old pen and paper method of writing down notes and tried to figure things out for yourself and with the interest in my oblivion assessment I figured it was about time to see just how much my patience had deteriorated and figure out if morrowind is as good of a game as I remember it being when I was 12 years old I'll be honest with you here I don't remember a lot about it but what I do remember is loving it to pieces for the year or so that I played it at my friend's house and here's a nice little warning for all you fellows out there who might be fixing to play this game I'll be spoiling pretty much everything in this brand new release anyways let's jump into this thing wait I know this Oh still a great track though we begin on a prison ship pulling into SATA 6a Dineen I don't know how to say these names this guy wakes you up and tells you to pack your [ __ ] because prison times over and this blockhead comes in to take you away first you get to choose your appearance which ranges from average balding man to different animals like cats lizards or walrus then you get to make your class either by answering questions or by doing it yourself I decided to do it myself and to not pick athletics or acrobatics as major minor skills I mean come on who would do that right then you get a nifty little tutorial in which the game tells you how to do [ __ ] in this room after looting the whole room for valuables and equipping your hanukkah stick for battle you scoot on out to this guy which the game tells you explicitly to not persuade but of course every real gamer knows that this is a trick and you got to persuade that guy before we proceed let's touch on the menuing system so everything you do in Morrowind is usually done through a menu if you thought that running through your inventory to chug a potion and Skyrim was tedious Morrowind cranks that [ __ ] up to 11 equiping lockpicks in your main weapon slot transferring loot cycling out spells everything is done through this big menu there are things to make it easier and it's definitely not the worst system in the world especially for 17 years ago but it's definitely a bit of a drag at times beyond that most of the dialogue in the game isn't voiced which makes you really appreciate all those lines that were voiced in later games it's actually kind of odd because I thought I would hate reading everything instead of listening to West Johnson voice every single character in the game but I actually didn't mind it as much as I thought I would it reminds me of something I used to do frequently but it seems like such a long lost memory reading books I wonder what happened to books anyways when you step on out into this small town you've arrived hold on hold on mods all right that's better when you step on out into this small town you'll notice the now beautifully swampy landscape that is Vardhan fell it seems kind of backwards to compare it to the later games but it's actually a pretty cool step away from the snowy mountains of Skyrim or the grab bag of landscapes of Cyrodiil after your release you're sent off to Balmorra to deliver a package because Uriel Septim is batshit crazy and picked you out as being a pretty cool guy for a prisoner I mean he's right dude knows what he's doing but damn I'd be questioning the hell out of him if I were an imperial guard I'd also probably be dead but before that I did a little exploring around Satan inna the commoners tend to give all the same answers and direct you to a shop that doubles as a tavern of sorts one guy in particular tells you that his group of people tend to shake down the locals for protection of sorts and that one guy hasn't been paying up so he sends you off to look for his hiding spot at night and my god you move so [ __ ] slow I'm just doing this bowlegged jog everywhere I go and it's infuriating but I got over it eventually you grab the pretty hefty sum of 300 gold from the stomp and report back well if you're stupid if you embrace your inner chaotic neutral you keep that [ __ ] to yourself the reason I'm going over this pretty insignificant quest is because it really lays out how morrowind setting works when you talk to citizens they tell you to not attack anyone unless they attack you first guards are obviously roaming everywhere and cracking down on simple things like loitering when you try to rest in town but still let this guy shakedown the other citizens for protection money if you choose to turn in the money you've found this guy's like sweet here's a hundred gold out of three hundred gold and you feel like a [ __ ] for even bringing it back to him the citizens are helpful but very reserved in how they approach you basically telling you that the system works here in a very do unto others as they would do to you sort of way when I went to rest to recover my health which is a very nice feature by the way I was attacked in my rest by what seemed to be a thief and his pet rat after missing 70% of my attacks I finally fell both of them only to discover that my assailant was part of the Dark Brotherhood when I asked the guard they basically said [ __ ] that [ __ ] I didn't hear anything don't come near me and to go to ebonheart to report the attack unfortunately this line of inquisition really only leads you to being attacked over and over while resting outside of towns until you go kill the leader of the dark brotherhood so i go to find the guy and I get slain by goblins so yeah I'll I'll deal with the attacks I guess I will note here that the sewers beneath the Great Bazaar are really intimidating at least they were to me I don't know what it is about older games that get me spooked more so than newer ones but something about these weird creatures with lesser graphics really creeped me out in a way that makes me feel like a kid again in fact I can probably say the same about most of marwan's foggy and gloomy landscapes as well when this guy dropped out of the sky and scared the [ __ ] out of me I tried out his flying spell and just the uneasiness of floating through the fog and not knowing where I was gonna land put me on edge in a very primal way the same goes for a lot of creatures in this game it's not just wolves and skeletons and bandits it's this thing and this thing and definitely this thing anyways after missing the river a dozen times before realizing that it's not deep enough I managed to use to flight spells to get to Balmorra quickly I'm actually pretty impressed with Elder Scrolls online at this point because I recognized pretty much everything in these towns from my recent memories of them unfortunately ESO has definitely reinvigorated Balmorra more than its original iteration did this place is well it's very se me to a degree where I get bored while a fat person jog around it if you don't have it memorized it's pretty annoying to continue lapping around it while checking doors to see if it's the one that you're looking for I found it easier to just run around the whole city and then check the map afterwards after reporting to Caius he gives you some gold and tells you that you can receive his orders now as a member of the blades or go get some experience in other guilds in the city Bellmore is on the smaller side of towns when you compare it to something like the Imperial City but all of the guilds seem to reside here in some form or another joining most of them is as simple as approaching the right person and saying hey let me in which is fine and all but it's a bit off-putting with a Thieves Guild in particular I mean you kind of just approach old sugar lips here and say hey let me in and I'm like yeah alright sit go steal some diamonds dude it was just a bit underwhelming compared to latter releases but it is what it is as for the actual diamond ceiling your mark is in a shop directly next to the shop owner and in plain sight so here's where I thought I knew how this was going to go down I figured I'll wait until night and break in easy right here's the issue I went to the upper floor of the shop figuring that the owner would be sleeping in their bed upstairs I would have gone for the lower floor but a guard was kind of hovering around it outside fortunately I didn't do that because upon entering the upper floor the shop guard was still awake and just chillin at the bottom of the stairs watching the main door upon further investigation the shop was was it was just open like it like it never closes shops don't close in this game and the shopkeepers never rest it was probably around 1:00 a.m. when I broke in and they weren't in their bed and the front door was still open I was kind of annoyed by this at first but then I found three diamonds in the chest next to their bed a little convenient but I understand how this mission was planned out by the devs at this point plus it's just the beginner quest I don't know as much as I appreciate the bait that was placed out in the near the shopkeeper only for there to be another stash upstairs it just kind of goes against logical conventions to be able to roll up in broad daylight head upstairs and snatch the diamonds another weird mechanic here is the concept of public and private beds this isn't a Thieves Guild specific thing either it's just the game mechanic I needed to lap sometime to break in or so I thought and found several beds in the dunmer temple they seemed public enough so I went to go sleep in one and then suddenly you're telling me that I don't even get a warning about it being someone else's property and now I'm a fugitive because I tried to lay down an enone bed what makes even less sense to me is the fact that I rounded the corner in the same temple and slept in this bed with no issue at all that's just ridiculous you report back and deliver this diamond and you get your next mission which is to steal key to a Manor you can do this by grabbing it from the owner himself or from his servant the game suggests the the servants the easier mark here so I went for him the problem is is that he just stands there in plain sight the entire time at all hours so I try to persuade him but my personality is only 30 so I try bribing him and with him sometimes refusing the gold outright and sometimes saying how great I am and taking it I was out 700 gold before he finally decided to give me the key yeah [ __ ] that I'm gonna pickpocket it so I used the invisibility potion to try to pick it from him except he never seems to have it I try and try and try and the key just never seems to show up and even when it does I'm usually caught even with invisibility because there's like 40 people around him so I decide I'm gonna taunt the guy into attacking me but didn't realize that I had to do it a few times so that one's on me so then I decided to scour the entire city for a fortify personality potion or a frenzy spell to use on him to get him to attack me first again no luck so you know what I did I went to the manor to find the owner standing still by himself with no one watching the door was wide open at all hours of the day you can go upstairs and loot his valuables as absolutely zero care of once then you can go back down afterwards stand directly facing him pickpocket him if he actually happens to have the key on him and then you just walk out the front door with no bounty at all why look I understand that this was well over a decade ago I'm not gonna criticize a game for not being able to do something that newer games are capable of but when you design a guilt to be about sneaking and stealing how do you [ __ ] up the very very basic and easily implementable design choice of there should be a sense of danger for stealing there was no breaking and entering required for either of these quests no needing to be particularly stealthy and it's all just luck on whether or not you find the key on the person before they start attacking you and then the game has the audacity to say hey by the way the servants probably gonna be the easier target here like they didn't just make an empty house and stick the other guy in it with no security the next handful aren't any better as you go to retrieve goods from a guy who tells you that he doesn't have them get him to attack you and then steal his key and grab the goods this is followed up by you actually breaking into a locked house for once only for the owner to be dead and you just looting the place with no repercussions then you're sent to get a guy out of jail by bribing the guard and then using that against them to free him and the final mission for the Balmorra branch of the Thieves Guild is finding a guy that's it like it's all just nonsense I don't feel like a thief I feel like an errand boy and I want to note here that I didn't go into this string of quests thinking like this I planned my attacks I waited until night I snuck around carefully and tried my best to immerse myself in the thieves guild quests but the game just kept taking me out of it with some generally poor decisions in my eyes so you know what I decided to do and I said [ __ ] it thieving just isn't for me in this game so let's move on over to the fighters guild it suits my heavy armor axe toting blunt weapon wielding ass anyways I started off with the familiar to me for some reason quest of taking care of some rats in a lady's home from there it's really just a lot of go here do this type missions go take care of these guys go collect this thing don't recover an item go collect a bounty but I found myself enjoying the game more than I did with the Thieves Guild and I didn't realize why until I stopped to admire the sunrise morrowind has an absolutely incredible setting it's not just the doom and gloom of the swampland it's the Dead nashi looking parts it's the foothills and the mountainous parts with the craters and the overall mix between prehistoric dinosaur like enemies and out-of-this-world alien life-forms not everything is out to get you there isn't a threat around every corner it's all very foreign and interesting to look at I don't think I felt like this with oblivion or Skyrim nearly every enemy in those games were just that enemies but there are so many of these odd jellyfish creatures floating bug entities and even these vagina faced ants inside caves that are just kind of minding their own business as you walk along I like that a lot because the landscape does a really good job of building up tension especially on a foggy night you feel like you're gonna be rushed by god-knows-what only to see this docile niche floating about it's mystical in its own way and I'm glad doing the fighters guild quests helped me realize that I think my favorite landscape at this point in the game is all Droon especially when it's going through an ash storm it reminds me heavily of the future and Chrono Trigger and it really helped the area feel immediately different from everything else so far anyways as I continued on I couldn't help but notice the naked Nord just hanging out in the middle of the crossroads at night I mean I'm not one for doing side quests if I'm gonna be honest here usually when it's stuff like hey I lost my ring it was in this mine my response is usually along the lines of well I guess it's [ __ ] gone then huh but when a man with a six inch floppy asks you for help finding his cloud cleaver I mean you got him don't got to ask me twice it's a short and funny side quest where the Nord is obviously a fish out of water in this land and the so-called witch who paralyzed him and took all of his things said he was getting a little too friendly with her so she taught him a lesson in the end you have to choose which one to believe and therefore which one to kill so I helped my fellow Nord Bob this broad around until we got his axe back and he carried on like nothing happened I like side quests like that they're really good about adding to the game without taking up an unreasonable amount of time or feeling like Pierre filler unfortunately the fighters guild isn't without its hiccups either I was diggin the Balmorra and aldrin branch missions just because they were either short and sweet or they sent you to really interesting areas around the map but the vet on the other hand okay let's talk about vivec this might be the part where a few of you tell me that this really isn't that difficult and it's something that you just get used to as you learn where everything is and I did get used to it eventually but regardless the Veck is a [ __ ] nightmare to navigate it's temple like design is really cool to admire from a distance but as with Balmorra everything looks very se me after you take a few laps around it to reveal the map you now have the luxury of being able to scroll over every little box to find which part of the vacuum heed to go to ok so you have the general locations of the Guild's shops and waste works memorized now pair that with the slow slow movement of this game and the gigantic city that vivec is and you have what can only be described as [ __ ] boring even being sent elsewhere isn't fun because you know that when you come back you have to go across three pyramids up multiple ramps into the top part into the guild hall down the ramps into the back of the hall only to get sent back out to do it all over again supplement that resentment of hiking back and forth with exciting missions such as collect this thing and kill this guy and you have an extraordinarily mundane part of the game which I found almost no enjoyment in besides when I got to hang out an altar room for a brief moment overall I'd say the fighters guild is a great way to get acclimated to the game as quickly as possible it's mostly collecting bounties on people resupplying the occasional mind and learning to stock up on potions because if someone drains all of your strength you have to drop all of your [ __ ] or reload which is just absurd it doesn't evolve too much until towards the end with cool areas like this cultist lair it's pretty straightforward and that you're helping keep the peace and justice and its rewards tend to stem from who you kill or the layers that you crawl through there isn't a grand overarching theme or epic tale it's just there to help you tour Vartan fell or it's so it seems that is until the end when you finally escort deliver and bounty hunt your way to the top you're left with the last two quests from the master of the guild he first has you take the leaders of the Thieves Guild saying that the fighters guild has aligned themselves to make sure that they're on the winning side of whoever comes out on top when Uriel Septim dies and that the Thieves Guild branch here is in our way so in an odd form of poetry I set out to kill the people who took me in first before any other guild did I actually felt pretty bad about this I'm not gonna lie but I did what needed to be done and got front-row seats to some of the most hilarious AI pathing I've ever seen as guards scattered every which way to figure out which position I'm in I wound up just walking up to them to pay my bounty after this extermination you're sent to kill the big boss of the Thieves Guild gentleman Jim Stacey he dies pretty quickly and has some pretty cool stuff on him it's actually kind of interesting that the game sets you on this path because it shows you what you could have had if you had gone down the Thieves Guild quest line but then gives it to you anyways it's also worth noting here that you're told that after this the master of the fighters guild would retire and you would take his place what he neglects to mention is that the way that you'd be taking his place is by killing him because this crazy [ __ ] jumps on you as soon as you tell him that you killed Jim Stacey yet another person who sends the hero off to do something that he can't do and then for some reason expects to beat him what's even funnier is that your former quest giver is like I'm not getting my position stolen and then he attacks you too I was sitting here thinking to myself yeah this guy could probably just keep doing what he's doing and stay in his position but well next on my to-do list was the morag tong this is basically marwan's version of the Dark Brotherhood although they're much more respected for keeping the balance between the houses and less about outright killing for the glory of sickness they're a secret society of hitmen who are hired to carefully take out the right target to ensure peace in the very community-based nation that they live in the concept is really cool and I was enjoying the idea of being a hired assassin for a little while that being said most of your marks are in vivec which is a real shame because I enjoyed the guild a lot more when I was sent out to find whatever the hell in your is I like the idea of slowly closing in on my target from a distance the tedium of running around vivex identical looking structures paired with Bethesda's patented caused me to really dislike questing in this area more and more the game even piles on to this by giving you a way of circumventing the cumbersome guild entrance in vivec and letting you accept writs from other morag tong guild locations instead only for them to send you right back to vivec regardless the actual writ targets are uninteresting and that they basically won't talk to you so you can't taunt them into attacking first without a high-level frenzied spell or by taking all of your clothing off it's interesting and funny the first time but after that it's more annoying to take off all of your gear get them to talk taunt them into attacking and then putting all of your gear back on eventually you're given special orders which begin to unravel the history of the Dark Brotherhood split from the [ __ ] tong and their rivalry over differences in religious beliefs this line of quests lead you to dismantling different key elements for the Dark Brotherhood and usually have you spelunking through different Daedric shrines to get to your target you're also tasked with retrieving 26 sanguine items that comprise the threads of the webspinner you're only told about a couple of them and the rest of them are up to you to find it's interesting because it seems like a lot of the initial thought here was we'll come up with 26 different boss enemies that carry around these items for the player to fight but then they decided wait that's that's too many let's maybe stick to two three and a few of these guys it's not a huge deal I just found it humorous after powering through the special orders and taking out Vardhan Fell's night mother you're made the Grand Master of the morag tong there are a few other quests to do as the Grand Master but they don't have a particularly strong narrative and they can actually cause you to sever some other quest lines so I decided against them for now it's funny because the old GM tells you that normally you're supposed to kill him to become the new Grand Master but then he goes I'm pretty tired so I mean you could just let me go if you want even funnier than that is that if you go sleep in his bed after becoming the Grand Master whether he's alive or not they kick you out of the goddamn guild because it's still considered his property [ __ ] beds man with that aside I left to finally join one of the three Great Houses house halal uu is all business supporting speed and agility house tell Vaughn he tends to house members that keep to them selfs and are extremely magic oriented to a point where they get into conflicts with the mages guild over magical resources and house retirin respects the warrior spirit revering strengths endurance and honor their core interests involved making morrowind great again by rejecting the Empire's presence and trying to re-establish their cultures roots as the dominant aspect of society yeah I joined that one and so the Grand Master of both the fighters guild and the morag tong was sent off to slay mud crabs that have been heckling some local cattle from here it's just a lot of unimportant quests delivering potions escorting a dude this guy took a helmet and calls you a mama's boy you know standard stuff eventually you get the opportunity to become a higher rank in the house by rescuing the son of one of the counselors basically he's being held by the arc master because he's been accused of murdering his best friend this quest is a good example of learning the game's mechanics and using them to their fullest extent now you might think man I got it sneaked past all of these guards with this guy behind me and I got to make sure he doesn't die too but a true Morrowind veteran will tell you that these a I can't path for [ __ ] and you can just run past them when you make it back you're sent to figure out what really happened with the murder of another retirin the son of the counselor tells you that he doesn't remember anything he just woke up next to his dead friend but he thinks it has something to do with an ash statue that he received while gambling when you confront the gambler he attacks you outright and you can loop the note that the dummy in charge sign for some reason long story short these statues were put into circulation to corrupt people as evidenced by the casual demon basement in this girl's house it's a pretty fun quest that made me continue to question why this game has guards in the middle of very tight walkways making it nearly impossible to get past them every time watch an unexpected surprise please go ahead and after that it's back to the usual I thought the quest after was pretty funny because you go back to this guy's house who you stole the key from when you were in the Thieves Guild to confront him about spreading rumors about the ark master banging some council members wife or something my guys just waiting here at the front door like you'd come back any day now and you just kick it in and then beat the hell out of him after stealing his key I've actually been diggin the house red Ren quest for quite a while now they tend to have a lot more flavor to them for example you're soon sent after a warrior who's gone mad and holed himself up along with his soldiers in a cave this cave is called milk I don't know what kind of sick joke this is but I've struggled with trying to memorize every foreign ridiculous name in this game when I searched for a lisandro Liam home of Arvin Vaughn real adelio not to be confused with arlen van brilla dolia and you have the audacity to throw milk at me like we couldn't just been calling these locations cheese and cloth and sweet roll but anyways you find out from the mad Lords father that his son went insane when his daughter was spirited away by some madman in a tower I'm not kidding this dude has created four test-tube daughters from his own DNA and it's implied that he bangs them on the Reg what the hell Bethesda he goes on to say Oh a girl like kidnapped yeah I don't know she's probably in here somewhere dude I know good luck you find her and then have her follow you out and then you go and tell the mad Lord that his daughters no longer hanging out and Craster's funhouse and then you return to get the news that it's built a stronghold time now here's where I found that the house red and quests really started to bog down as your strongholds being built you're to begin earning the support of other counselors to become a house father and then eventually a house counselor yourself this means running back and forth from Manor to Manor traversing this godforsaken shell of a mushroom looking dead crab the quests aren't interesting at all and they don't take very much to complete by any means after that it's just sleeping until your stronghold is ready to go and then it's back to upgrading the stronghold and gaining more support it isn't fun and I probably wouldn't mind it as much if it didn't seem to be all about you going from one place saying hey I'm here and then going back to report that all is well god I hate these narrow [ __ ] bridges a particularly funny part of this entire endeavor is the part where you go to visit your stronghold to see what else could use some work and this guy's like it's a sausage fest around here we need women so your options are go ask for women to join your stronghold and marry your men or go buy slaves like you can't make this [ __ ] up well like you can I guess and Bethesda sure did I just thought it was hilarious to go from citizen to citizen going me need wives for stronghold finally you get your stronghold fully upgraded with women and the last council holdout is a guy named miner first milk now miner anyways miners like NAT dude can't support you which one of the counselors find strange so he sends you to figure out if he's under tell vani influence which sure enough another daughter's been kidnapped I think we're starting to hit a dead end in terms of questing creativity at this point but either way you finally become a council member and your last task is to take the arch masters place by defeating him in a duel to the death as is tradition for replacing pretty much every guild master so far in this game [Music] Oh alright let's pause to go over what I haven't joined or completed yet there's the mages guild obviously the imperial cult the tribunal temple the Imperial Legion and the main quest line for the blades I'm sure there's probably something I'm missing here but I'd be lying if I said that I'm not anxious to jump into the main quest line at this point I've gotten around Vardhan felt quite a lot by other guilds that I've covered and I'm super curious about the ever looming Ghost gate and learning what it's all about morrowind definitely seems to be a game that's meant to be played through with multiple characters to get every house covered and that's fine and all but I can feel myself starting to get burnt out at this point as cool as I'm sure the mages guild is I think it best be saved for another day on another character and another playthrough so while I'm sure it'll be blasphemous to a few of you I'm going to forego the Imperial call and the mages guild and move on to the tribunal temple and the Imperial Legion I decided to go for the temple quests first the tribunal temple's been a pretty big part of the game without me directly involving myself so I figured it was time to get religious upon attempting to join your first sent on a pilgrimage to visit the Seven shrines across the land presenting a unique offering to each of them or undergoing a unique trial I actually like this quite a lot because as I've stressed I think the environment of this game is easily its best feature and even better ghost gate is mentioned as part of this pilgrimage so I at least get to dip my toes into whatever the hell that thing is everything was fine until I got to the shrine that lets you float for an ungodly amount of time I wonder how high I can go does this last forever am I still rising yes can I just go over the map like this oh [ __ ] um I'm gonna go over ghost Gate oh god okay well that that doesn't what's what's happening ah am I gonna die would away am I gonna run into something I want to be here let me down I don't wanna be here I don't want to be here I don't down let me down let me down let me down let me down this was easily the most anxious I've ever been in an horror game and there's really no reason for it because there was nothing that could get to me that far up but seriously the pilgrimage is awesome it gives you some amazing powers that basically show you what Lord vivec is all about the part where you drown yourself to reveal a path up to a friendly but fed-up dream aura is hilarious because the guy is basically there for pilgrims to show up and give him the silver swords that are in the chest next to him like they're the special one to do it dudes basically a Disney worker anyways after you get through all the shrines you begin working as a member of the temple this includes healing a racist or a COO worships sheogorath taunting a Daedra until he threatens to rape your corpse gently solving three riddles issued by various adren axe cutting down a necromancer becoming a belmont and slaying a pack of vampires taking a vow of silence while you travel north and recovering lots of lost relics not all quests for the temple are woefully interesting there are many that are much of the same kind of cure this person bring supplies to this person kill these evildoers type shenanigans even so I can say that a very large chunk held my attention span for much longer and excited me in a way that a lot of the other factions hadn't at this point I really do think that the temple quest line is the peak of what morrowind has to offer a lot of the powers you gain from the worship of Lord Vivek feel like cheat codes that are built into the game and they left me feeling more and more like a demigod myself but not without some cautiousness and unease that comes with the Daedric temples and the ghost fence it's a good balance between being concerned about something ganking me in an ash storm at the beginning of the game to laughing in the face of most enemies that I encounter and yet somehow still being very on edge in the hellscape of Red Mountain more of the mystery of this giant daunting fence is unveiled as you press onward through this quest line revealing that it's there to keep the blight of de Gotha Earth's army of ash and vampires at bay finally you're given an audience with the art cannon who tells you that you're to be his replacement but first you're given one more pilgrimage to go on you're sent to visit for Daedric shrines and read them a nice poem a few of them require additional offerings but they're all pretty standard Daedric shrines besides uh well shell gore alpha while not as insane as Oblivion's Shivering Isles the shrine still has some pretty silly things happening in it after you're done you're sent to one more place to receive some nice eben-emael when you return you're told to keep the armor and that you're now the new patriarch of the temple I immensely enjoyed nearly every facet of this faction it was a very interesting journey of exploration and learning about what makes Lord the vex so special and Morrowind as a whole the way that it is culturally to finish my faction tour I enlisted in the Imperial Legion the bar was set pretty high for me personally after the tribunal temple quests but I tried not to get my hopes up too much when you first join your immediately sent to take the land deed of a woman whose husband biffed it in the egg mines that's uh well it's definitely an interesting start just because it makes the Legion look like the [ __ ] that a lot of natives tend to paint them to be they're basically a foreign nation who are asserting the will of the Empire onto a very cultural and spiritual people so you go to try to retrieve this deed and the widow tells you that she thinks a legion soldier killed her husband this is an interesting crossroads because I could have just stolen the deed from her but I could also go figure out the situation I initially thought with the way that I was ordered to retrieve the deed no matter what the cost that my commanding officer wouldn't care about this foul play but as it turns out he ordered to execute the guy which I already did and decided to drop the inquiry about the land knead this opening quest paints the character of the Imperial Legion as a well-meaning group that tries to beat fair and just to everyone but always puts the Empire first if it comes down to it they're on shaky diplomatic grounds with a foreign nation and they're trying to preserve the peace while working to help the Empire after this your missions tend to go back to the rescue this person and escort them to safety type scenario that you've witnessed a thousand times before but also dips into you being an internal investigator as you try to figure out why some of the members of the Legion are practicing the worship of Tiber Septim in secrecy it's a bit strange because that practice is totally allowed within the Imperial Legion so the secrecy is concerning sure enough this dingus decided to not burn the note that told him to burn it and also told him that they're going to try to assassinate Uriel Septim side note here you're required to wear your armor that you're given at all times when interacting with Legion officers this definitely hindered me at least to a degree because the armor that they give you is trash compared to the ebony that I've been rocking at this stage of the game the next order I received is humorous because you go from doing generally productive things for the Legion to this [ __ ] was talking [ __ ] he said we don't have any courtesy go show him that we have courtesy yeah all right okay nevermind back to killing a traitor in a cave somewhere wait someone's slandering us so yeah this quest giver for the Legion is super different from the first one he's ignored which may have a lot to do with the defending your honor thing but it's just a very odd break from helping the Legion with the rescuing of people and expelling cultists to putting people in their place because they said some mean words about the Empire as time went on it began to dawn on me that the Imperial Legion and Vardhan fel doesn't seem to know what it's doing very much but seemingly pretends like it does at all times at least that's how I interpreted it that initial facade of them being do-gooders in a foreign land seemed to dissipate as more and more incompetence shine through over a quarter of its missions our rescue missions and the stakes don't tend to ramp up too much after progressing with the quest givers the final order for a quest giver in buck math is to retrieve a glove that one of the Legion soldiers gave to a buoyant Armiger which is a soldier who serves the tribunal temple and Lord vivec the quest is as easy as walking into a cave and saying hey can I have that glove back basically the Imperial Legion views both the ordinator 's and the boy and Armiger 's as rivals and are very concerned about looking like they're the best of the three - the rest of the public so that they can indoctrinate Mauro and easier this makes the rest of the orders that you receive a mixture of mundane and childish as you're sent to make the Legion look like heroes to the public via shutting up other people and taking care of small threats faster than the local military forces it's a far cry from the initial excitement of getting caught up in moral conflicts or investigating internal treason even the ending quests seemed to paint the Legion as incompetent as you're told that a very important set of armor was stolen right beneath them in the same building that you're in when you go to investigate there's a hidden exit which leads to a cave where the dude's just sitting there still with the armor I don't understand why he thought the best place to hide was 200 feet from the crime but I suppose it has the same amount of merit to it as a hidden entrance in the stone that no one in the keep knew about besides him so you bring this super important armor back to the guy and he just pops it on and is like here's my old [ __ ] have fun then he tells you all right you can be the best rank in the Legion but first you got to get me a legendary sword that's guarded by a witch so I do that too and he goes cool cool you're pretty much the top rank now oh you want my position too well I mean you got to fight me to the death then seems pretty wise to duel the guy who just got you the legendary gear but yeah sure your funeral what a bunch of nonsense the content of this quest line wasn't the worst in the world I wasn't bored out of my mind or anything but man talk about a lame group of people all right one more thing before I finally move along to the main quest I feel like I probably didn't give the Thieves Guild a fair shake I've done a bit of research and a lot of the objectives for the Thieves Guild sound particularly interesting things like helping out the poor by stealing creating a spider Centurion from scrap and ending the corruption of several high-ranking members of various factions there's quite a bit of intertwining between the thieves guild quests and other ones that I've completed for the fighters guild and the morag tong so I really got the other side of the coin for a few of these quests it's a damn shame because these motives sound fascinating to work around and I would have loved to have been able to set aside my disdain for how stealth stealing and other aspects of the Thieves Guild works I feel like in a more modern and polished game these quests would have been really good but it's hard to justify spending the time to go through these objectives when the mechanics built around them are so heavily flawed in my eyes I just want you to know that while I may have been a bit hasty on my judgment earlier I still stand by the fact that I would have been left with a very bitter taste in my mouth for the gameplay despite the stories than the lore that were told and given now that that's out of the way let's finish this thing so after returning like a year later because you decided to heed to caius advice and get some experience the shirtless lad is still in his house waiting for you to bring him information about the six house and the nerevarine after doing a few laps around the Dwemer runes for this godforsaken puzzle box he learned that the sixth house was a group that betrayed the rest of the houses and was dismantled seemingly entirely via the killing of most of its members in the absorption of the rest after this I took a nap because I did a little training and I had leveled as this happened my screen went black and it wasn't the traditional black of the game crashing the journal gives you a better visual as it tells of a man with a golden mask chanting these words among a crowd of frozen not breathing people when you tell caius of this dream he tells you to keep it to yourself because the temple would lock me up for being a prophet a witch or just plain crazy little does he know I am the temple on top of this I started to get approached by a few random people who thanked me for saving them from their dreams and then walked off while chanting demonically about the sixth house which I mean well it confused the hell out of me upon doing a little research apparently a few of the quests I did intersected with this part of the main questline meaning that I missed out on a bit of dialogue and explanation as to what's happening here which let's be honest is kind of [ __ ] up this is an increasingly frustrating facet of morrowind as a game that has been bothering me more and more if I had just ignored a lot of the side stuff I'd have gotten more dialog and lower from the main quest but because I went and played the game that I wanted to I'm now punished for it I'm all for being able to do what I want when I want and I agree that if I just started stumbling into various Daedra runes and fighting the Lords inside that I'd be sabotaging my own game but it seems downright silly to make the side quests in the game intersect with the main ones it was already pretty annoying when the faction quests overlapped with the other faction quests but this is an outright poor decision to me anyways next we find out a bit about the nerevarine cult a very small group of Ash lenders who condemned the temple as worshipping false gods and instead choose to believe in a mortal hero who once fought to unite the dunmer against all false gods and threats to the land they believed that the legendary hero naira VAR will be reincarnated once again to unite all natives and purge all foreigners from the lands of Marwin the problem here is that it's been so long that there are many conflicting reports of what nerevar stood for exactly and that the Nura Vareen cult seems to think that his will is to suppress any and all Outlanders which constantly leads to them clashing with other factions which I'm now the leader of the tribunal temple constantly seeks out and Crusades against this comparatively miniscule faction which raises quite a few red flags if the temple has nothing to fear then why would they bother persecuting this small sect of Ash lenders with such impunity it's worth noting here if you hadn't noticed that the main plot of morrowind is very complicated for someone who has had no exposure to it it isn't as simple as hell gates opening and then you have to go beat the bad guy who's making them there's a lot of infighting that you need to work around to get to that point of oh okay here's the bad guy let's go kill him it's an interesting contrast from Oblivion's plot because the threat is extremely clear from the beginning and the infighting and politics prevail because of the portals opening around cyrodiil as opposed to the deeply rooted disdain which a lot of the factions in morrowind hold for each other before anything major happens the main takeaway here for anyone who may have found morrowind boring in comparison is that there is a lot of research to be done and there is a lot of reading necessary to fully understand the elements that are at play here hell I'm sure I'm missing a lot at this point still I'm not going to assess whether or not this is a good thing or a bad thing because really it's just personal taste I could totally understand why someone would view Skyrim or oblivion as the better game than Marlin but I could also completely understand why avid morrowind players would be disgruntled with later releases anyways I'll try to boil the details of the plot down to a minimum so this doesn't turn into a dissection of the game's lore elements as fascinating as it is I could probably go on for at least ten minutes just covering the various relationships between these groups so jumping back into it I continue to dream these odd visions of seemingly resurrecting myself as I carried on with my information gathering it's pointed out that nearly all Ashe lenders feel that foreigners should leave their land or at least leave them be but even the average Ashe Lander feels quite skeptical of the prophecies which the nerevarine push this all leads to Caius letting you know that the emperor is certain that you are the reincarnation of Lourdes narro var and that you as the potential nerevarine must go to be tested to see if this prophecy is true or not once you become more friendly and pass a few trials with the ursula ku clan you're told that you cannot be the new revering but that you may become him still the main issue is that very much of the information that has been passed down to the wise women of these tribes is either fractured or lost the earth shall aku wise woman herself tells you repeatedly that she only knows of certain elements and that you should go find out more about these lost prophecies seems a little silly to believe so heavily in a string of prophecies that you only know parts of but Who am I to judge upon returning to Caius with this information he directs you to a sixth house base which needs to be wiped out when you meet the minister dag off Garris at the end of the cave system he tells you that de Gotha is back again and that he forgives you basically de Gotha knows that you are Lourdes narro VAR incarnate and explains that you and him used to be very close friends and that he was your faithful servant before you betrayed him and killed him as he guarded your treasure he now invites you to join him again explaining that he has put the past behind him and that he will give you immense power as the two of you can reign once again and spread blight across the continent I would have loved to have had the option to joined agathor and not need to fight dag off Garris at this point I wouldn't have taken him up on that offer but you're really given no choice as Garris attacks you anyway after your chat upon defeating de goth Garris you contract corpus disease which appears to be incurable by traditional means so you're sent back to the crazy ass wizard from before here's you by basically repressing all symptoms you're still infected but you experience no negative effects from the disease and are now actually immune to all other diseases and aging the aging part is mentioned so casually - like yeah also you don't age now cool a cool side part of this quest is that you actually meet a dwarf who refers to himself as the last living dwarf in all of Tamriel when you return to Caius he basically gives you his position telling you that he's been called upon to return to the Empire he tells you to keep figuring out this whole situation and to not worry about the imperial city because it's all going to hell when Uriel Septim dies soon pretty interesting how spot-on he is with that assessment given the events of oblivion after this you're back on the information hunt which eventually leads you to the dissident priests of the temple these priests question the direction that the tribunal temple has been proceeding with and believe that the bigger threat here should be repelling dagoth ur not hunting the nerevarine this unfortunately has driven them into hiding from the temple as they are persecuted for clashing with the temple hierarchy here after you're sent to a shrine that's overlooked by the goddess Asura called the cavern of the Incarnate it is here where a Zira loudly explains to you what to do like really loudly like [ __ ] scared the hell out of me loudly alright alright look there's too much lore I mean not for me but for this video what am I the body equivalent of morrowind let's break the rest of this down super quick there was a big-ass war a while ago between the dwarves and the elves of morrowind this war occurred because the dwarves were trying to use a very powerful artifact filled with divine energy to basically create a mechanical God nirav are united his people and launched an all-out assault on the doors which ended with them being completely annihilated as a race the speculation is out there that they might have used the artifacts power and destroyed themselves or relocated off of the planet in the end the tools which the dwarves invented to harness the power of the artifacts were left behind and a great debate raged on as to what to do with them dag Arthur was immortal at this time and was indeed friends with Navarre and suggested that the tools be destroyed because of the suggestion NER 'var entrusted dag Arthur to guard the tools while they debated what to do with them when they returned de Gotha refused to give them up as he had gotten curious and absorbs some of the divine power into himself the end result left Agatha are dead and nirav are critically wounded who died soon after there is a bit of conflicting views as to how nirav are wound up dead many said that he was wounded during the battle and was finished off by his lieutenants with poison narrow vars remaining lieutenants drew power from the artifact and became gods themselves creating the tribunal temple as a religion for people to worship them and causing Asura's Wrath to basically transform the elves of morrowind into dark elves the new gods then set to covering the truth of what happened rejecting the old gods and spreading their new religion of themselves to the rest of morrowind this is about the best of what I can do for a summary and even then it might just be wrong you see Bethesda wasn't sure what they wanted to do with the story at this point and because of that there was no definitive version of it every group tribe and factions seemed to have their own version of the events and all of it is painted in a very murky way I actually enjoyed this plot a lot because it reflects that age-old idea of the winners of wars right history it's a drastic journey of mindfuck after mindfuck where i started out believing one thing and learning of the temple's beliefs through my pilgrimage but wound up finding out information that had led me to change my perspective with every new piece so let's get back to the gameplay what have I been doing well information hunting it's very clear that Bethesda wanted to tell its story here and for good reason it's quite the good read in fact I found myself more interested in trying to find the answers and understand the plot more than I actually wanted to complete the objectives at this point it's not necessarily a bad thing I was just having a lot more fun trying to interpret everything then going into the end of a tomb grabbing a bow and then leaving although the game does throw the occasional curveball at you like go buy a slave to become this guy's wife so that he'll call you the nerevarine or murder half of this tribe so that the other half will call you the nerevarine after your meeting with Lord vivec he gives you Wraith guard a gauntlet capable of wielding two powerful tools to destroy the divine artifact from before which is called the heart of lorkhan he also proclaims that the temple will no longer hunt the nerevarine cult and will allow the dissident priests which were exiled to return your next task is to find these tools called sunder and keening and then make it to the final showdown with dag other interesting side note here you can actually kill vivec it's a tough fight but if you do it the game tells you that you've severed the strand of fate and that you should reload an old save or carry on in a doomed world but that isn't technically true because vivec has an artifact on his body which spider dwarf can figure out how to use and turn into a jury-rigged version of the Wraith guard gauntlet there's no further consequence that the game's story beyond this which is rather odd but it's still something you can choose to do if you wish so it's off to Red Mountain for one last crusade first recovering sunder and then keening I'm not one to complain about short dungeons and quests but the final quest is actually surprisingly short sure there's some optional things that you can do to gather some more powerful equipment but if you beeline it straight to the main objectives it takes maybe 25 to 30 minutes max when you finally make it to dag out there as he beckons you to his chamber you have a little chat with him the wrathful God asks you your motives before you ask him his he claims to be the one that will expel all Outsiders create a nation of divine beings and eventually take over all of Tamriel after morrowind becomes his beacon of divine justice he also intends to finish what the Dwemer started by completing the giant brass god that they were attempting to build so many years ago what's funny is that dag Arthur it tells you multiple times that you are the Challenger and that you will be allowed to have the first strike but he doesn't allow you to do that as soon as you're done speaking he starts casting on you immediately fortunately he ain't [ __ ] unfortunately he certainly is [ __ ] when you walk out the doors which lead to the heart after fleeing from him and smoking the heart he's vulnerable again and easily dispatched honestly the fight with vivec was 20 times harder but I appreciate the idea behind this fight I just wish the heart didn't take so damn long to take out it make more sense if de goth kept coming back to attack again or enemies were constantly spawning around the heart but yeah that's not the case either way the heart is destroyed and Nazira floats down to give you a ring thanks for the help almighty goddess when you climb your way back outside the smoldering red ash storm is gone and you're greeted with the clear skies over Red Mountain the ghost gate deactivates and the cliff racers are free to attack you as always I'll be honest with you I really didn't think I was going to like morrowind as much as I did when I was a child I remember being fascinated with the amount of things you could do because it was the first game that I had played that was like it but delving back into it after so many years of improvements to various systems mechanics and general quality of life changes has made me resent a lot of its obviously older and clunkier design choices there were so many things that made me scrunch up my nose and roll my eyes because I just couldn't ignore them the city of vivec is still a horribly laid out main hub that made me feel relieved to return to the brown and dull looking Balmorra movement is mind-numbing ly slow at the beginning of the game it only gets a little bit better when you get towards the end combat is a slew of misses until you finally tomahawk chop your way up the levels as well stealth mechanics are laughably non-existent for most of the game and don't feel rewarding at all to practice the taunt until someone attacks you concept is a horrible chore that makes me want to take the penalty for attacking someone outright but even then will result in expulsion from a particular faction most of the time a lot of quests are repeats of others and I mean a lot of quests are repeats of others and some even send you to the same places that you've been before all while every cliff racer in a five-mile raid homes in on your location some quests even intersect with others in such a way that it breaks different quest lines even outside of the fighters and thieves guild quests but at the same time the environment of morrowind is absolutely my favorite to explore out of every Elder Scrolls game I would say it's mysterious and foggy and filled with ash storms and has this daunting final area that you can go to right away if you're feeling brave it actually gave me the same feeling of dread and uneasy had in Final Fantasy 6 when I was hunting death gaze the power-ups you receive in the trials that you go through for the tribunal temple were really fun to get involved with the idea that you can be your own person and do the things that way that you want to is ever-present and encourages you to try out different routes and other playthroughs and the sheer amount of storytelling is crazy in a good way because it made me care about the game in a way that I didn't think I was capable of anyone who's followed my videos for a bit probably realizes that I rarely if ever dive so deeply into the lore of a game like I have with morrowind I actually surprised myself with how vested in the plotlines of this game that I've gotten I can tell you right now that before taking on this endeavor I had almost zero interest in the fine print of the Elder Scrolls seemingly endless lore I have to commend a game for making me care about what's going on in the background so is morrowind as good as I remember yes and no it's nowhere near as good as I remember it being mechanically because those old nostalgia goggles were pulled from my eyes almost immediately with very dated mechanics but from an exploration and story perspective it's some of the most fun I've had in an Elder Scrolls game the way that you forge your destiny as the nura Vereen whether you believe or not that you're him or just a cool dude who happen to be in the right place at the right time it's a very fun way to add your flavor and play your way it's not for everyone I'm very well aware of that hell I'd say on a day where I feel like shutting off my mind and having some fun and killing things and doing whatever that morrowind is a horrible choice for that but I respect the hell out of it for what it's accomplished during its time and I can easily say that I am a fan of the game more than I ever have been and that's it thanks for watching this has easily been the most daunting video for me to make I honestly had a lot more fun than I thought I would if you want to catch me between this video and the next I rarely stream on Twitch beyond that I have a Twitter which I use sometimes in a discord where you can chill out and chat about stuff if you want to have a good one

Channel: The Salt Factory

Views: 2,801,277

Keywords: The Elder Scrolls III, The Elder Scrolls 3, Morrowind, TES3, Analysis, Breakdown, Review, Evaluation, Go here do this, Main quest, Blades, Thieves Guild, Fighters Guild, Morag Tong, Tribunal Temple, Lord Vivec, Dagoth Ur, Dark Brotherhood, but more like goblins, House Redoran, Imperial Legion, Umbra, I'm so upset about my scuffed audio, but I'm going on vacation tomorrow lol, Draemora, Daedra, Sunder, Keening, Dwemer, Dunmer, Dwarves, Vvardenfell, Uriel Septim, Caius, Nereverine, Nerevar

Id: Lw1DU8I22l0

Length: 57min 21sec (3441 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 11 2019