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Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The

EMAIL PRINT pc

8.7 User Score:

Generally favorable reviews

Based on 30 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

Based on 76 votes
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Game Info

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Developer: Bethesda Softworks

Genre(s): Role-Playing Game

Players: 1

ESRB Rating: T (Teen)

Release Date: April 29, 2002

Summary

An epic, open-ended single-player game where you create and play any kind of character you can imagine. Be the noble hero embarking on an epic quest, or an insidious thief rising to leadership of his guild. Be a malevolent sorcerer developing the ultimate spell of destruction, or a reverent healer searching for the cure to a plague. Your actions define your character, and your gameplay changes and evolves in response to your actions. Confront the assassins' guild, and they take out a contract on you. Impress them, and they try to recruit you instead. No two sagas are the same in the world of Morrowind. [Bethesda Softworks]

Also On Metacritic

GAMES: Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon, The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Cheat Codes & Hints: Adrenaline Vault Cheat Code Central Game Revolution GameSpot Guide

Also On The Web: Official Game Site

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

GamePro

Morrowind effortlessly grabs the other PC RPGs by the throat, swings them around, and leaves them in a heap on the side of the road.

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100

G4 TV

One of the largest and most richly detailed fantasy worlds ever to wear a set of polygons. There are literally hundreds of hours of gameplay.

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100

Four Fat Chicks

It is a beautiful, exciting, rich, and well-written game. It is everything that a great CRPG hopes to be.

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100

Total Video Games

The most engrossing, deepest and open-ended videogame you’ll see for a very long time, at times it feels like more then a videogame, something to get completely caught up in and realise that time has no importance when you’re playing it.

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GamerWeb PC

Morrowind comes so close to perfection right out of the box.

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AtomicGamer

Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is an excellent game that should keep most players busy for weeks. Its open-ended gameplay style is revolutionary, and will surely be emulated by future RPG titles.

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Armchair Empire

The best role-playing game I have played in years. It features wonderful graphics, a compelling main plot, an immense number of subplots, and all the micro-management a pen-and-paper role-playing game (RPG) geek could ever want.

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IGN

Shows more planning, talent (aesthetic, programming, and design) and creative vision than anything I've played in a very long time.

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GameZone

Bethesda Softworks has fulfilled all the hype that the game has obtained. The game is not only brilliant, but also fun to play, and looks wonderful!

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Voodoo Extreme

A massive, open-ended game that allows the player to do what they want, when they want...The type of game you can play for six hours straight and not even realize it.

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ActionTrip

There's just so much that when I think about the experience of Morrowind, my mind goes into sensory overload and shuts down. There is that much going on with this game.

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PC Gameworld

This is a game that can stay on your hard drive for six months, still offering new experiences.

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Game Informer

One of the most in-depth and cerebral role-playing games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. [June 2002, p.84]

Pregaming

One of those games that just visually takes your breath away. It has some of the most detailed, and well realistically rendered environments and characters ever seen in a computer game.

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Quandary

It really feels like another world and you can play the game however you like - be a mage, thief, acrobat, pearl diver, bodyguard or warrior. Or like myself, be a little bit of each.

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Yahoo! Games

Walking down the steps into one of the larger cities, Balmora, for the first time is a moment that will stay with players for some time to come. It's the best-looking RPG to date, undoubtedly, and certainly ranks among the most graphically-impressive games around.

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Computer Gaming World

Comes close to being the massive, sprawling, open-ended, role-playing epic you've always dreamed of. [August 2002, p.68]

Gamer's Pulse

An impressive project, and I have an ocean full of respect and admiration for the ambition, energy, and devotion that the developers poured into this game.

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GamePen

To put it simply, Morrowind is truly a game of epic proportions and will most likely only be finished by the most hardcore of gamers.

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PC Gamer

I'll still be playing it in months -- if not years -- from now, that's for sure. [July 2002, p.77]

Games Radar (in-house)

Morrowind will please both serious role-playing fans as well as anyone looking for a technically stunning adventure that will hold their attention longer than your average hack-and-slash title. This is the good stuff.

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GameSpy

It ranks right up there with recent classics such as "Baldur's Gate," "Fallout," "Arcanum," and "Planescape: Torment" in terms of sheer enjoyment, and is a game every role-playing fan needs to own.

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GameSpot

Offers some of best value for the money of any single-player game currently available, and it ranks up there in terms of size, scope, and quality with some of the best games the role-playing genre has ever had to offer.

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Game Over Online

With such an expansive game, it was bound to have multiple technical issues. Not only did I, and other people, experience these problems for quite a while before the game finally worked, but even after a patch was released, random crashes and other problems still occurred. Technical issues aside, this is still a great game.

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Game Revolution

The Elder Scrolls tech support forum is overflowing with user complaints about compatibility issues. At any rate, this is still the biggest, deepest, most detailed RPG to hit the PC since Daggerfall, and for that, earns high marks.

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Adrenaline Vault

Elegant, enormously detailed and full of extraordinary stories (to say nothing of the construction set that allows you to make your own).

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Cincinnati Enquirer

This tale includes more than 3,000 nonplayer characters (NPCs) and hundreds of monsters to interact with, giving the impression this open-ended (and certainly nonlinear) game is as limitless as the player's imagination and time.

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All Game Guide

Players with high-end systems will enjoy the scenery and gameplay more, but the pauses and stuttering framerate will annoy everyone.

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Electric Playground

Subtract the balancing issues and the system requirements and it's not nearly as good as it could be, but I enjoyed my time with it.

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Games Radar UK (Pre-2006)

At times this sense of freedom is overwhelming, and attending to the minutiae can be tiresome.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this game is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 76 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Franck D gave it a10:
There s no game yet, that have come to the deepness and size of Morrowind. Especially for those that don tlike to be grabbed by the hand and understand the real meaning of an adventure and understand concept of P&P Role Playing Game... Oblivion compared to Morrowind is a failure. And still today 2009 due to the awesome quantity of mods, i still play Morrowind, while Oblivion has been sold after 3 weeks of weak gameplay, options and tale. I hope, but surely ain t waiting, that Oblivion V will be as grand as Morrowind. IF the company can only backtrack to its RPG heart as were Daggerfall and its predecessor i´ll be happy.

Chris R gave it a10:
Fantastic story, amazing graphics with an astonishing range of beautifully detailed environments. Literally hundreds of hours of interesting side-quests. You can master everything with one character so there's no need to play though several times. You can literally become an invincible godlike figure and still encounter various challenges. Dwarfs virtually every other RPG i've ever played. A truely incredible feat of game engineering. My favourite game of all time.

Kyle R gave it a9:
This game is almost perfect. I can spend countless hours playing it, learning new things about the backstory, finishing quest, or just exploring. The thing I love most, is how endless it really is. There are just so many atrifacts, little side quest, big side quests, factions, silly characters and easter eggs. The list just goes on, and on, and on. If I were someone planning on buying this game, which I am, because I sold my Xbox, I would buy the Game Of The Year Edition, and get Tribunal and Bloodmoon.

Ryan b gave it a9:
This is one of the best games ever, i compare so many games to this, and they almost never come close to being so engaging. The joy of exploring this dense and diverse world, will leave you coming back for more, and more. While today its hard to find the graphics amazing, now that the game has been out for 7 years, they are still well done, and the concepts solid. The main weakness is the combat system, which in the early levels of your character will be incredibly frustrating, but as you progress this becomes less and less of an issue. You basically miss a lot until you get some decent skills. The sheer number of items, weapons and armors has yet to be matched in a game. This game is far better then its successor oblivion. If you are into a good story, and a world filled with intriguing lore then this is the game for you. This is perhaps the only game where you pickup a book and you can actually read it, and not only can you but you want to because it further immerses you in the world. Add the huge user content community and you have hands down the best RPG to ever grace the pc.

Brandon gave it a10:
This only game that I have replayed several times using other player classes and haven't even finished the main quest! This is because, with the numerous guilds, its ridiculous, if not impossible, to experience them properly the first time through. Bought it was it was released in 02', still playing it now in 08' with unfortunately(?) nothing to replace it. I've tried the better bodies mods which actually look better than Oblivion bodies but with one caveat - you must have clothes meshes.

Robert B gave it a6:
The island of Morrowind is a large, well-realized world rich with lore and backstory which ties in well with the lengthy main quest and many optional side quests and guild affiliations. Unfortunately, the actual game-play is boring, one-dimensional, and extremely poorly balanced. Magic is either overpowered, with single spells making entire skills like Acrobatics or Lockpicking trivial, or underpowered. In combat, magic is virtually useless unless you use really cheap tactics. Some things about the game sound good in theory, but in practice just don't work, such as skill advancement through skill use (in order to advance your magic skills to a usable level, you pretty much have to repeatedly cast spells out of combat). Fortunately, the PC version of this game has a host of mods available which patch up a lot of the game's flaws, but some of the underlying problems go unaddressed. The trick to enjoying Morrowind is not to think of it as a fun or exciting game, but more as an interactive storybook.

Samael gave it an8:
Morrowind is a game that can sometimes be frustrating. On one hand, the lore and fluff material is deeply enveloping, the sound design amazing, and the setting brilliant. On the other hand, the graphics have not aged well, NPC's are all basically the same, and many troubling bugs require frequent quickloading or console manipulation. Boring combat and samey enemies do not help this title. But if one looks past the bugs and boredom, they'll find an extremely immersive game with a lot of interesting quriks to it. Some people claim to have put 100's of hours into this title, but frankly, after a while, the content becomes tedious and repetetive. The intricacies of the politics and religious affairs, however, make this game unmissable for any gamer who seeks a more intellectually challenging adventure, and isn't concerned about pulse-pounding combat.

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Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, The

Game Info

Summary

Also On Metacritic

What The Critics Said

What Our Users Said

Upcoming &
Recent Releases