The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind

The third game in the Elder Scrolls series, and the first main series game in full 3D, Morrowind takes you to the island of Vvardenfell in Morrowind where you, the Player, must fulfill a prophecy to save the island from the evil Dagoth Ur and his Sixth House Cult. In the Tribunal expansion, the player goes to the city of Mournhold to stop. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition includes Morrowind plus all of the content from the Bloodmoon and Tribunal expansions. An epic, open-ended single-player RPG, Morrowind allows you to create and play any kind of character imaginable. Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has been unleashed on a very deserving people and if you've got the mettle, then I have got arguably one of the finest RPGs ever made. Morrowind is a classic RPG with uncommon realism and staggering replay ability.

The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal is the first expansion for Bethesda Game Studios' The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. It takes place in the temple-city of Mournhold, the capital of Morrowind, located in the larger city of Almalexia. The title refers to the three 'Living Gods', known as the Tribunal.^[1][2]

Gameplay[edit]

Instead of directly modifying the original game world, the city of Mournhold is only accessible by teleportation. While the city of Mournhold appears to be similar to the open-air towns of the original game, Mournhold is actually akin to an interior room. Players cannot levitate while in Mournhold, because levitation would reveal that the 'sky' of Mournhold is little more than a ceiling (although the game states it is forbidden so not to offend Almalexia). Should a player go over the walls of Mournhold (using spells or scrolls such as Scroll of Icarian Flight) they will find the area of Mournhold they were in floating in an endless ocean. The other districts of Mournhold will be absent from the ocean. This was probably done because the original game included only the islands of Vvardenfell, and Mournhold, in the fictional geography of Tamriel, lies on the mainland and a considerable distance inland.

The most notable aspect of Tribunal is the modification of Morrowind's journal system. In the original game, a player's journal can become extremely lengthy and cumbersome. Tribunal allows a player to sort their journal by quest (instead of chronologically sorted) in order to determine what is required for a specific quest. Another notable feature of the expansion is the Museum of Artifacts. The owner of the museum will pay the player half of the value of an artifact (up to 30,000 gold) for one of the very rare artifacts of Morrowind. This is more than the player can get for the artifact at any other store. The museum starts with one artifact (Stendarr's Hammer) and puts the new artifacts on display cases as they are sold to the museum.

Plot[edit]

Once Tribunal is installed, the plot will start after the player first goes to sleep. The player will be attacked by an assassin, who is later revealed to be a member of the Dark Brotherhood, an assassin's guild that spans Tamriel. To find out more about the Dark Brotherhood, the player will be sent to Mournhold, the capital of Morrowind. Once in Mournhold, the player will have to locate the head of the Dark Brotherhood and complete a series of side quests for the new King Helseth, and the Living God Almalexia. Almalexia has ruled Morrowind for thousands of years alongside her fellow gods Vivec (seen in the base game) and Sotha Sil, who call themselves the Tribunal, and are worshipped by the Dark Elf people.

After the completion of one of the side quests, a group of mechanical creatures called Fabricants suddenly attacks Plaza Brindisi Dorom. The creatures emerge from the statue in the middle of the plaza, and after their attack, a secret passageway to a Dwemer ruin is revealed. Since the creatures are mechanical, it is suspected that the secretive god Sotha Sil is behind this attack. The player then has to investigate the ruins and complete a few more side quests, in order to reconstruct Nerevar's lost sword called Trueflame. Upon acquiring the sword, the player is sent to the Clockwork City in order to kill Sotha Sil.

The player continues to explore all the rooms of Clockwork City, finally arriving to find Sotha Sil dead. When the player tries to leave the room, Almalexia appears and alleges that she had killed Sotha Sil and instigated the attack in Mournhold, in order to gain more power and control over the citizens and the Tribunal. Having been driven mad by the Heart of Lorkhan, she perceived Sotha Sil's silence as mockery. The player is then forced to kill her before returning to Mournhold.

As the player exits Almalexia's temple in Mournhold, the Daedric Prince Azura reveals that the Heart of Lorkhan drove Almalexia mad and made her hunger for more power, and that mere mortals cannot become gods without consequences. By destroying the Heart of Lorkhan and killing Almalexia, the player continues fulfilling the Nerevarine prophecies, particularly the death of the Almsivi Tribunal.

Development[edit]

Tribunal was originally the working title of the third main Elder Scrolls installment, which would have taken place on the Summerset Isles, a province far southwest of Morrowind. Bruce Nesmith contacted Clyde Caldwell in 1996 and commissioned him to do an early cover art for the game. After the setting of the third game was changed from Summerset to Morrowind, the title of the game was changed, and 'Tribunal' was later re-purposed as the name for the game's first expansion pack.^[3] The expansion was announced on September 6, 2002, by Bethesda.^[1]

Reception[edit]

Tribunal was generally well received in the gaming press.^[9] Among aggregate review sites, Metacritic scored the PC version of the game with an 80 out of 100,^[5] and GameRankings scored it at 81 out of 100.^[4]

Steve Butts of IGN scored the game with an 8.6 out of 10 and said, 'Although the few cameos of people you heard about but never met are neat, it's the big revelations that really sell the title. Some of the legends of Morrowind finally make their entrance here in aspects both splendid and terrifying.'^[10]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^ab'The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Announced Expansion Set to Award-Winning RPG Morrowind to Arrive in November'. bethsoft.com. September 6, 2002. Archived from the original on August 1, 2009. Retrieved September 4, 2016.
2. ^Laprad, David (2002-09-22). 'The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Interview'. The Adrenaline Vault. Archived from the original on 2005-05-01. Retrieved 2007-05-13.
3. ^'Clyde Cadwell on the 1996 Tribunal Cover'. Imperial Library. Archived from the original on November 5, 2017. Retrieved November 6, 2017.
4. ^ ^ab'The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Reviews'. GameRankings. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
5. ^ ^ab'Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal, The (PC) Reviews'. Metacritic. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
6. ^Desslock (2002-11-21). 'The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal for PC Review'. GameSpot. Retrieved 2017-11-06.
7. ^Abner, William (2002-12-02). 'Morrowind: Tribunal (PC) Review'. GameSpy. Archived from the original on 2002-12-21.
8. ^Lafferty, Michael (2002-11-18). 'Review: The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal'. GameZone. Archived from the original on 2002-11-19.
9. ^ ^ab'Tribunal Reviews page'. Bethesda Game Studios. Archived from the original on 2007-06-12.
10. ^ ^abButts, Steve Muatra (2002-12-09). 'Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal Review - Do you even need to expand Morrowind?'. IGN. Retrieved 2017-11-06.

External links[edit]

• The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal at Curlie
• The Elder Scrolls III: Tribunal at MobyGames

OpenMW: The Future of The Elder Scrolls III:Morrowind

Image Source: https://en.opensuse.org/OpenMW

A few months ago, back in June, I wrote an article regarding the open source revitalization of Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall through the Unity engine, which you can find HERE.

As it turns out, there is an open source project for what I consider to be the greatest ( as far as my opinion goes, for that matter) of the elder scrolls series; The final “Hail Mary” from Bethesda from when they were on the verge of bankruptcy: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. This project: OpenMW, is one which I am much more familiar with and also happens to be quite a bit further along than Daggerfall Unity is -and- is effectively complete with regards to functionality. I just had to write about this amazing title before the summer was over but hesitated to because, while openMW is open-source, the base game :”TES III: Morrowind” is not available for free from the developer like Daggerfall is; You still have to purchase it either digital or of you have a boxed version, that works too (any and all versions/formats of Morrowind Retail are compatible with OpenMW).

For Digital Copies, My two suggestions are always Steam and GOG (Good Old Games) where you will find the “GOTY: Game of the Year Edition” which includes both expansions: Tribunal, and Bloodmoon.

Now that we have that information out in the open, whether you already have a copy of the game, plan on getting one , or are simply interested in what is next, you will want to download OpenMW HERE. One of the greatest things about open MW is, due to it being a game engine overhaul, it has been re-written so that a retail copy of Morrowind can be played on Linux and Mac as well as Windows!

What other reasons could there be in favour of OpenMW? You no longer need a bunch of graphical mods that were taxing on computer performance to expand the graphics capabilities of the game, instead they have also been re-written to behave more effectively with modern computers and display in modern resolutions with crisp, up-scaled graphics, all the while being resource minimal and accessible to older computers; It truly is a wonder in the world of Open Source game engine overhauls.

A Personal reason why I like Open MW is that it allows me to play a near-vanilla game (which is my favorite way to play), but I can also enjoy modern quality of life updates, bug fixes, up-scaled graphics that don’t ruin the original games’ atmosphere (like many mods will do). It is also worth mentioning that it has many open -source modding projects going on and one mod for it already has given the game a multiplayer feature, which I cannot comment on unfortunately.

I will always enjoy just playing Morrowind straight out of a fresh Steam install, but since the last few years, I have been opting to play through OpenMW with a few community bugfix patches and official (free) dlc as it has proven to be a much more enjoyable experience, mainly due to the engine’s superior performance on my machine.

My Go-To Video when it comes to setting up a fresh Install of Morrowind (with a few extras) is a tutorial from the Lore-Man himself, from my Daggerfall article: Zaric Zhakaron . In my opinion, this video highlights the greatest way to play Morrowind in the current year, while also maintaining the original and authentic vanilla experience. More Diehard Morrowind fans are abandoning their pretty graphics mods for a cleaner and more optimized experience every day and there is no doubt that OpenMW will be the future of this classic game.

The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind Walkthrough

In case you are interested in the highly recommended Patches and official DLC mentioned in the video, you can find and download them here: The Eight Official & Free DLC, Patch For Purists, and Delayed Dark Brotherhood Attack.

Again, if you are an old Morrowind player, you need to watch this video and get your copy of the game set up in Open MW, and if you are someone who has never played the game, but may be familiar with TES V: Skyrim or other Fantasy RPG games, you should very much consider (and I highly encourage) you to get your hands on a copy of the game for PC and try it out just in general. Even without the attention of modern overhauls, Morrowind really is a Gem and one of the most fantastic atmospheres and lore-filled worlds in any RPG game I have ever played. If you can get past the fact that you will need to read text instead of having voice actors speak the lines, then you will be in for a real treat!

The Elder Scrolls 3 Morrowind Cheats

With Projects like OpenMW, classic games like Morrowind can be kept alive and functional as technology improves, and there will always be a handful of the newer generation that will benefit from the continued rejuvenation of classic games so that they can be enjoyed for years to come. In fact, now that I am talking about it, I might just be rolling a new character in Morrowind soon…..