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Elder Scrolls 3: Bloodmoon
Review by Steerpike There Will Be a Quiz on this Tomorrow It's been a year since Morrowind was released. Most gamers who intended to finish it have done so—immersing themselves in a story rich in the political and religious intrigue of a bleak and dreary nation full of angry people who don't like you. Last December, Bethesda obliged us with Tribunal, the first Morrowind expansion. It further immersed you in the political and religious intrigue of a bleak and dreary nation full of angry people who don't like you. Though bleak, dreary, and full of angry people, Tribunal did spice up the franchise by including a surprising amount of goofy humor, and despite its few flaws it was highly regarded. Now we have Bloodmoon, expansion #2. And where Tribunal was a pleasant addition but not a necessity, Bloodmoon will be for serious Elder Scrollers—it sets the bar even higher for any other studio thinking of developing a CRPG, adding levels of new worth to an already worthwhile game. For those gamers for whom the thrill of Morrowind has faded, Bloodmoon will rekindle your excitement. Though it only adds about 20 to 40 hours of play, they are well worth returning to the world of Morrowind to experience. Bloodmoon shies away from political/religious intrigue, introducing you instead to a fascinating world of corporate fascism and territorial exploitation on the island of Solstheim, a new region coveted by the East Empire Company. The EEC, Tamriel's answer to the luxury-hungry conglomerates of our own world's colonial time, is establishing an ebony mine on the island and wants your help. (Mom and others who read these articles but don't play the games, "ebony" in The Elder Scrolls series is not a fancy wood but a midnight-colored metal of nearly unmatched durability and value.) It's up to you whether you join the Company and help direct the growth of the new outpost, or join those who'd rather not kowtow to a bunch of corporate stooges. Since it wouldn't be Morrowind if there weren't some political/religious intrigue, toss in a prophecy about werewolves and an ancient curse and you're good to go. Solstheim is (wait for it) ... a bleak and dreary area full of angry people who don't like you. The nation of Morrowind, of which Vvardenfell and Solstheim are just parts, shares its western border with the nation of Skyrim. Skyrim: desolate, ice-choked, forbidding; populated by the Nords, loud Vikinglike brutes who enjoy drinking, swearing, and clubbing things. They're a far cry from the scheming Dunmer, with their crafty natures and Byzantine theocratic tangles. Solstheim is so cold and inhospitable that it's home to more Nords, who love snow, than it is to Dunmer. And though Nords and Dunmer may squabble over who the island belongs to, in reality everything belongs to the Empire—which brutally conquered it all centuries before and crushes every breath of resistance with barbaric cruelty. An American Werewolf in Morrowind Bloodmoon is more cleanly integrated into the world of Morrowind. There are multiple ways to get from Vvardenfell to Solstheim, the new area shows up right on your world map, and though Solstheim is environmentally rather different from Vvardenfell, it's less jarring moving back and forth between the two than it was doing the same with the Tribunal expansion. Solstheim is mostly arctic forest and tundra, an exciting graphical change from the boggy Vvardenfell, sporting new weather effects and flora. I wish they'd polished the graphics engine a bit for this expansion; though it still looks great, I can only imagine what pixel-shading algorithms and DirectX 9 features might do with effects like ice translucencies and blowing snow. I guess we'll have to wait for the sequel before we see a major upgrade to the game's graphics. You do see a fairly extensive new bestiary on Solstheim, ranging from Nord Berserkers to wild razorback boars, snow wolves, multiple species of bear, and more magical beasts than you can shake a sword at. New creatures are good looking and pretty well balanced, but Bloodmoon isn't for beginners and even the simpler creatures would pose quite a threat to anyone under tenth level. Solstheim is as steeped in Nordic tradition as it is Dunmeric, so your encounters are tinged by exposure to this new culture as well. Nordic Fryse Hags, undead Draugr, and the frustratingly tenacious Spriggans all smack of Skyrim mythology. Outside of the wilds, the Imperial presence on Solstheim is very much under construction. The landscape around you changes as the story of Bloodmoon progresses—the Raven Rock mining outpost comes together day by day, and you get the satisfaction of watching your activities and decisions impact the course of the outpost's growth. The Imperial Fort Frostmoth, imposing as it is, undergoes changes of its own as well. All this helps you feel more immersed in the world of Bloodmoon. Whereas Morrowind and Tribunal were essentially static environments, Solstheim grows and changes as time passes. It's really neat. You're given a choice fairly early on about whether you want to be "good" or "evil," these items appearing in quotes because it's open to fairly subjective interpretation. As usual you're under no obligation to follow the story arc. If you want to just roam the new area and have adventures, feel free, though there is a lot more to do in Bloodmoon if you do follow the story than if you don't. And, of course, there is the much-talked-about opportunity to turn into a werewolf. Accomplishing this is not much more difficult than encountering a werewolf and getting yourself bitten a few times; some nights later an alarming dream will start you down the path of lycanthropy. It's an exciting twist, playing as a semi-wild beast with uncontrollable bloodlust, concealing the dark secret from all lest you become one of the hunted. Bethesda may have hyped this one aspect of the game a little too much; it is, after all, just one of the many branching paths you have the opportunity to follow. But Will You Fix it in Expansion #3? It is the story of Bloodmoon that makes it so good: the story, combined with the new environments (the forests are really something to behold), the new monsters, and the quests and adventures. The Nords are an interesting people with a fascinating culture—hopefully they'll be explored further in a later Elder Scrolls title. And for those who got a little tired of the often ridiculously intricate plot of Morrowind/Tribunal, with its dozens of significant characters, living gods, messianic rumors, false prophecies, true prophecies, forgotten cults, power grabs, aboriginal rituals, betrayals, religious disputes, clandestine activities, secret societies, ancient lineages, lost artifacts, imperial thuggery, books worth of information to digest ... well, Bloodmoon is easier to follow, though no less devious and clever. It has a different tenor than the other two, a sort of Lewis and Clarkish colonial expedition feel to it. This new, pleasing flavor stands as a nice break from the occasionally tedious exposition of Morrowind and Tribunal. The flaws in the game are not, for the most part, Bloodmoon's specifically. Bethesda uses these expansions as an opportunity to patch the game as well, and unfortunately they didn't address a few issues that still desperately need attention if Morrowind is to become a game that people keep playing long after they've finished the main quests. And though these issues are fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, they are irritants—and irritants should always be dealt with. 3D pathing, for example, remains ghastly. NPCs who follow you are bound to become stuck on something or left behind because they cannot climb a step or clamber over an outcropping. Other NPCs, programmed to wander randomly, occasionally will come to a dead stop in a hallway or passage too narrow to accommodate two people abreast—effectively blocking the corridor. The only solution in some cases is to draw your sword and hack the obstacle to pieces: distasteful from a roleplaying and immersiveness perspective. There also still is no way to effectively edit your spellbook. I want to be able to rename spells I already own and sort them according to my own scheme, rather than alphabetically. I want the ability to delete some spells from my book. I want to color-code. It would be a simple enough thing to add an applet that allows a player to export his or her spellbook to Excel and do the editing there; why hasn't it been provided? The same goes for the journal system, which was improved slightly in Tribunal but is still weak and unwieldy, offering mediocre cross-referencing and clumsy organization tools. In a game as complicated as Morrowind, a linear journal isn't good enough. There still is no provision for horses or other riding animals to speed up movement. This is something that should have been included with the original Morrowind but wasn't; its absence now is almost unforgivable. A horse+saddlebags plug-in should be the next project Bethesda works on. Bethesda has, however, corrected some issues that were problems in the past. A number of new armor and weapon materials have been added to Bloodmoon to supplement the usual components. A great quantity of new alchemical ingredients are also available. Some of the traders on the island have large sums of money on hand, so you can sell extremely valuable items for something closer to their actual worth. And the creatures in northern Solstheim are sufficiently challenging as to pose some threat, however minor, to even very high-level characters. But Bloodmoon does not balance the game. Super-difficult monsters are still confined to a very small geographical area. And a high-level character still is not seriously challenged by the end of the game—unless you've done something wrong, by the end of Morrowind/Tribunal/Bloodmoon, you've amassed several hundred thousand pieces of gold, a vast armory of magic and exotic weapons, an unstoppable spellbook, and chestloads of equipment. In fact, most players plug in a lair or receive a stronghold from one of the in-game Noble Houses to store all their booty in, since much of it is too valuable to sell. The result is that by the end of the game, you are a steamroller in a land of carnival glass; even the final confrontation with Lord Dagoth isn't challenging, it's anticlimactic. The Last Unicorn But as I said above, these complaints are not Bloodmoon-specific, so while I wish the new expansion had addressed them, I won't penalize it for failing to do so. Bloodmoon is a tremendously valuable expansion to the world of Morrowind, adding a new story and an environment of real depth and complexity. Frankly, had Bethesda chosen to make Bloodmoon much longer and more involved, it could have been a sequel rather than an expansion. It brings that much originality and value to the table. I'm going out on a limb here, but I'll guess that Bloodmoon represents the final Morrowind expansion. Expanding a game that's already more than a year old doesn't make much sense, since the replayability of any story-driven RPG is dubious (ultimately you are just experiencing the same story again in a different way). Furthermore, Bethesda has a lot on its plate—it's making the Pirates of the Caribbean movie tie-in, an adventure game based on Lovecraft's Call of Cthulhu stories, and, amusingly enough, The Elder Scrolls Travels—compact ES games for your cell phone. Once these franchises are on store shelves, we can expect Bethesda
to turn once again to the world of Tamriel and begin thinking about
The Elder Scrolls 4. Morrowind was a shockingly huge success,
selling very well on both the PC and Xbox platforms. Reviews were
outstanding, its return rate was low, and customer satisfaction
was enormous. So while there's little doubt that the Elder Scrolls
series will continue, I think gamers have seen the last of Morrowind,
that bleak and dreary country full of angry people who just
can't seem to like you, however much we like them. |
The Verdict
The Lowdown Developer: Bethesda Available for: Four Fat Chicks Links Screenshots
System Requirements Win 98/ME with 128 MB RAM Where to Find It
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