The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind review

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls, we're publishing our original reviews of each main game in the series from our archives. This review first ran in PC Gamer UK issue 111, back in June 2002.

To the outrage of the Morrowind enjoyers of the current PC Gamer team, this is the lowest score the UK mag has awarded for any release in the main series—although 83% is still more than respectable. (Our sister magazine, Edge, was much harsher, awarding it 6/10.) Reading this review, I get the sense that as much as Ross appreciated much of what the game did, he struggled to look past the infamous Bethesda jank. As Ross himself says, «More cynical souls may have a less enthralling experience than those whose imagination can fill in the gaps.» It's a sentiment that, for a certain kind of player, could hold true for any of the Elder Scrolls games.

Developer Bethesda Softworks
Minimum system PIII 500, 128Mb RAM (256Mb with XP)
Recommended PIII 800, 256Mb RAM, GeForce 2
Release date May 1, 2002

I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me one. While reviewing Morrowind is hardly a life-threatening quest—and the advice never to get off the boat would prevent progress past the first minute of the game—it's a Herculean task. We're used to RPGs demanding weeks of play and immense patience, but the Elder Scrolls series has always aimed to offer particularly huge and complex worlds. Morrowind takes this to a new extreme.

Developers Bethesda were clearly unsatisfied with the randomised world offered by Daggerfall (PCG 35, 89%) and have sought here to define every quest, location and NPC in detail. The result is an island just three miles across but packed with thousands of unique NPCs, perhaps thirty hamlets, villages and—incredibly—a potential 500 hours of adventuring. Sounds great, doesn't it? And for the most part, the game's mechanics are mightily impressive. But the impression is that Bethesda have aimed for quantity first and foremost; inevitably, quality