Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
I jumped into the game and played around a little bit. After going into shops and looking at how much crap was I realized what guild to join. I needed to be a thief. You can up your stats by training that isn’t cheap. Be a thief, steal 400 bucks worth of stuff, sell it, and go increase your security stats. This seemed like the easiest way to boost stats and become a decent character. Fighting most enemies seemed next to impossible without high stats.
Morrrowind didn’t have much of a story to it. You just play and join the guilds you want to and do what you want. The game has the absolute freedom that I was hoping Fable would have. There is a main quest that you can pursue but I never tapped into it. The story to the thieve’s guild quest was rather interesting. Of course, they have a rivalry with the fighter’s guild, but it is only because the fighter’s guild is corrupt. After you do all your petty thief quests you get to bribe and pursue leaders of the fighter’s guild to ally with the thieve’s guild. After that you get to do Robin Hood style thief quests that give you no rewards at all.
With lack of story like few RPGs, there aren’t any characters to fall in love with. There are plenty to hate though… you can even kill them and steal every single possession from them. This was the one thing that I didn’t enjoy about the game. You were a one-man party. It was easy, but it didn’t bring depth into the game.
The world map was huge. It was actually an Island Map that was huge. I’d say it would probably take you an hour or two to walk from one side to the other. There are plenty of towns, villages, settlements, and tombs that you could never get bored with bugging people and finding stuff.
Battle system wasn’t too bad. You equip one weapon and one magic/ability at a time and landing the attack/magic was basically like rolling dice D&D; style. Your fatigue had an impact on if an attack connected. The more you ran around and swung your sword, the more the meter would go down. If you stood in place it would slowly regenerate.
Music of the game was great…. But there wasn’t much of it at all. When you walked into town you would hear a minute or two of a song. Nothing cheery or peppy found in most RPGs. I probably can only recall three different songs.
Challenge really varied. The beginning thieves guild quests were extremely easy. Example: Go steal a key from this guy and bring it to me so I can loot the place (of course you loot the place first and still get a lot of money for completing the quest). Later quests seem next to impossible. Example: Break into this fort and steal this staff, however the owner is a powerful mage who can kill you with two spells. OR Go steal 8 death surikens off the beds of the guards in this manor when there are 10 guards in the room!
This game is exactly what I wanted out of Fable, except you can’t kick chickens in this game. This game is the closest thing I’ve wanted in a non-linear RPG. I’m hoping that Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion will be even better.