I've played a whole lot of RPGs. Let me restate that with gusto. I have played a WHOLE LOT OF RPGs. I've been playing them since the days of Bard's Tale and the original AD&D computer game line. And before (and after) that I was playing all sorts of pen and paper RPGs. You could say I'm an expert at what makes a good RPG. With that in mind, I'm sure you'll hang on my every word as I tell you just why you should rush out and buy a copy of Morrowind and play the heck out of it if you haven't already in anticipation of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Morrowind. Ah, where to start. Let me start by saying that Morrowind is by far the best console (single player) RPG ever in my opinion. Morrowind is a single player version of Everquest. That might be pushing it a bit, but the game world of Morrowind is amazingly huge for a single player game and there are literally hundreds of things to do in the game that aren't even necessary to beat it. The guys behind Morrowind (Bethesda Softworks) must have been clinically insane by the time they went Gold. My hats off to ya fellas. You build a heck of a game. Morrowind is a daunting game to play. Without writing a daunting review I'll try to keep it simple and give you just the basic elements.

Morrowind (The Elder Scrolls III) is played from first person perspective. From the very opening sequence of the game (a neat little sequence of conversations in which you decide who your character will be) you get the sense that the game world is going to be huge. Let me put it this way. I played Morrowind for nearly half a year before beating it. No, not half a year of continuous gameplay, but you get the point. And I thought the Final Fantasy games were long.

The options in Morrowind are boggling and at times you feel overwhelmed, but hard core RPGers will love this. It's a feature not a bug, as they say in the business. You get this impression right off the bat. The boys at Bethesda give you 3 ways to create your character. You can answer some questions and take the class they come up with, choose from a list of 21 default classes, or you can create a custom class. You may be one of ten races, each with special abilities specific to that race, and you can even choose what zodiac sign you were born under for some added special abilities. Once you have your race chosen, you'll get to alter your facial appearance. Bear in mind that there aren't any opportunities to see your face in the game though (no mirrors); however, you can go into third-person mode and have a look. Morrowind is every bit a true RPG in these respects.

Now let's face it. Most games today are about killing things. Even old school RPGs were mostly about killing things. Morrowind doesn't depart from this formula. Where it does depart from older RPGs is that the combat is all real-time first person hack and slash. Don't worry though! It's not pure first person mayhem. You won't feel like you're just button mashing and dodging fireballs. The combat is a bit slower paced than that.

Like all good RPGs, the real emphasis is on character development, interacting with NPCs, and story. As you play, you'll gain experience in the skills you use most, allowing you to get better and better in those abilities. Abilities include things like lock picking, sneaking, melee fighting, alchemy, armorer, spell casting schools (divination, enchantment, etc.), mercantile, blocking, and several others. My favorite skills tend to be thief skills (my favorite RPG class) because I like picking pockets and locks, sneaking around, etc. The great thing about Morrowind is you will have ample opportunities no matter how you choose to play your character, whether you play a fighter, thief, mage, or somewhere in between.

There are hundreds of NPCs in the game to speak to. The dialogue system is quite intuitive. Every conversation has hypertext style highlighting on important words and phrases that you can drill down on for more information. You have a journal that allows you to go back and reread old conversations on subjects that are listed alphabetically. Expect to do a lot of reading when you play Morrowind, and have a pad of paper so you can keep track of all the quests you take on. At the height of my gameplay experience, I had anywhere from five to twenty quests written down that I had not completed, and as I scratched one off, two new ones took it's place. While the dialogue is not spoken, the NPCs do offer some spoken words when you walk up to or by them. "Make it quick outlander!"

The story is truly epic, involving your character as the centerpiece of a world shattering plot. The number of quests in Morrowind is also world shattering. Plenty to do here. Some side quests can't be done unless you play the game as a different character that chooses different allegiances and there are several different houses that you can swear your allegiance to. Would I replay the game just to do those quests? Do you think me mad? Its way too long and I have to have a life of some kind! So I have to say that replayability is low for the sheer amount of time you have to play it in the first place to beat it; however, if you breeze through the game without doing much of the extra stuff or exploring the world in full then you would have a great time replaying this game.

The world is huge with a capital H. The cool thing is you can literally walk around the entire world on foot, discovering all sorts of little dungeons on the way. You can also make use of one of many forms of rapid transit such as riding a giant insect for a small fee, or using the mages guild teleport system. Boats are also available for some cities.

A couple of things I like related to equipment include the ability to make your own potions with alchemy and the ability to add magical properties to your weapons and armor. You use "soul gems" to capture the souls of monsters you kill then use that soul gem to enchant your weapon or armor with magical properties -- very cool. One thing I didn't like was that as you get further into the game, you start finding weapons and armor that are worth tens of thousands of gold. This isn't a bad thing per se; however, the most any one merchant in the game ever has on him is ten thousand gold, and he's a hard one to find. So it's really hard to sell these things should you choose to do so.

I'm probably missing some good stuff. Hopefully I've covered all the basics and wet your appetite.

Morrowind, being a few years old now, had only one pixel shader in the game that I saw. Most people will remember all the hoopla about it in the press: the water. It was great back then, but doesn't really look as good as the newer water shaders of today's games. The texturing in Morrowind (on the X-Box) isn't anything special and the character animation is chunky at best. Despite this, the game isn't all that bad looking, and the world is quite impressive looking. Weather effects were nice and night and day transition was smooth and quite pretty actually. The age of the graphics engine won't keep you from having a good time and being fully immersed while playing this game. Just don't expect any of the newer effects like normal mapping, etc.

Music tends to be an afterthought in a lot of games. I felt like that wasn't the case with Morrowind. It was well composed and executed, and was fully dynamic, changing with the situation. It gave a sense of the grandeur and other-worldliness to the game. The sound effects were decent, but nothing to shout about. I really enjoyed the ambient weather sounds, however. In conjunction with particle effects for rain and dust storms, etc., they helped put you in the world. The voice acting was pretty good, too, and I never once found myself wincing in pain from bad VO work.

There's not much to say in regards to the technology of the game (a good thing). Solid tech. No noticeable bugs during gameplay. AI was smart enough for this type of game, but nothing exceptional, so don't expect high levels of intelligence from the AI. They see you, they run straight at you and attack. It's good enough for an RPG. If you get the PC version, you also get the world editor: a nice feature for aspiring RPG game developers out there. X-Box users aren't so lucky. The controls were intuitive. Of course, you could always change the default button layout in the options, but I found the original setup fine. The menus and HUD were nothing ground breaking, but well layed out and accessible.

Morrowind is a huge game and it will take you an extremely long time to beat. I recommend looking online for maps and hints to completing certain quests if you get stuck. There are many good resources. A few of the side quests require items that you may have already found during your exploration. Be careful! Don't drop them somewhere thinking they aren't worth anything! You may find yourself pulling your hair out trying to find them again later when you realize you needed them for a quest like I did. Beyond that little frustration, the game was very, very fun and ate up a lot of my free time. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is on the top of my wish list thanks to Morrowind. I know I can expect my money's worth from the guys at Bethesda.