The completion of Redguard in 1998 led to a return to the Morrowind project, as the developers felt a yearning in their audience to return to the classically epic forms of the earlier titles. Finding that the gaps between their technical capacities and those of rival companies had grown in the interim, Bethesda sought to revitalize itself and return to the forefront of the industry,[38] an effort spearheaded by project leader Todd Howard.[39] The XnGine was scrapped and replaced with a licensed copy of NetImmerse, a Direct3D powered engine, with transform and lighting capacity,[31] 32-bit textures and skeletal animation.[24] During their promotional campaign, Bethesda deliberately paralleled their screenshot releases with the announcement of NVIDIA's GeForce 4, as "being indicative of the outstanding water effects the technology is capable of".[40]
The scale of the game was much reduced from the earlier concept, focusing primarily on Dagoth Ur and a smaller area of land. It was decided that the game world would be populated using the methods the team had developed in Redguard; that is, the game objects would be crafted by hand, rather than generated using the random algorithmic methods of Arena and Daggerfall. By 2000, Morrowind was to be unequivocally a single-player game, with no chance of multiplayer extension. In the words of Pete Hines, Bethesda's Director of Marketing and PR: "No. Not on release, not three months after, no no no."[34] The project, despite the reduced scale, became a massive investment. According to the team's reasoning, the endeavor took "close to 100 man-years to create". To accomplish this feat, Bethesda tripled their staff and spent their first year of development on The Elder Scrolls Construction Set, allowing the game staff to easily balance the game and to modify it in small increments rather than large.[38] According to project leader Todd Howard, the Construction Set came as the result of a collective yearning to develop a "role-playing operating system", capable of extension and modification, rather than a particular type of game.[41] Despite the additional staff, designer Ken Rolston would later state that, compared to Oblivion, Morrowind had a small design team.[27] Around 40 developers worked on the game.[42]
Morrowind was the best-selling RPG for Xbox in 2002.[78] It was one of the top 10 best-selling games on Xbox from May through October 2003, a full year after its initial launch.[78] The only other game to accomplish this feat was Halo.[78]
Despite being Bethesda's first major title to be produced for a console, Morrowind's Xbox release was well received in the gaming press.[38] The inability to use add-on modifications on the Xbox version was unhappily felt,[84] as was the decreased resolution,[85] but the qualities of detail and open-endedness which had similarly graced the PC release made good the Xbox release's faults.[84] Morrowind's Xbox release sold very well; it continued to rank among the top 10 sellers on the console one year after its initial release, a feat matched only by Halo: Combat Evolved.[86] In spite of its critical and commercial success, Morrowind did not win any end-of-year press awards for its Xbox release.
The Elder Scrolls III: Bloodmoon, announced on February 14, 2003, and scheduled for release in May of the same year,[111][112] went gold by May 23,[113] and was released on June 6.[114] Bethesda began work on the expansion immediately following the release of Tribunal in November 2002. Bloodmoon is a larger expansion than Tribunal, in terms of area covered and content created;[115] it expands the game's main map to include the untamed island of Solstheim located to the northwest of Vvardenfell, a frigid northern tundra sprinkled with forests, and many new varieties of creatures, such as the short but tough rieklings. These additions marked a return to the "open-ended gameplay" and "free-form exploration" of the original, in contrast to the linearity and confinement of Tribunal.[116] Reviews for Bloodmoon were, again, generally positive. Aggregate scoring sites gave the game generally favorable scores: Metacritic, a score of 85;[117] GameRankings, a score of 83.[118]
The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition was announced May 12, 2003, and released October 31 of the same year.[5] It compiled both the Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions, along with patches available only for the PC release, plus a variety of minor quest and item add-ons, and offered them up in one single package for both PC and Xbox platforms. This provided Xbox players with most of the game content they had not previously had access to.[124] Absent, however, from the Xbox version was the improved journal included in Bethesda's Bloodmoon and Tribunal releases, as well as the later patched editions of Morrowind's original release. Reviewers responded to the absence negatively.[125]
Games are rereleased all the time. Since the average shelf life of a game is measured in weeks rather than months, game publishers find convenient ways of reissuing some of their stronger titles in order to give them more exposure throughout the year. The typical "game of the year edition" or "platinum hits" version of a game offers nothing more to those who played the original release than a discounted price and a shiny, new box. However, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind Game of the Year Edition is an exceptional case. This reissued version of last year's incredibly huge Xbox role-playing game includes a ton of new content as well as a few notable gameplay tweaks, making it easily recommended for Morrowind fans. On the other hand, those who were put off by Morrowind's huge, open-ended world will find an even huger, more open-ended world to be intimidated by in Morrowind Game of the Year Edition.
The two new expansions add roughly 100 hours of gameplay to a title that was already best described as massive. Completing everything in GOTY Edition should keep the average player occupied for at least several hundred hours-making this a great game for people who want to buy one game a year and play it forever.
Overall, whether or not one enjoys Morrowind: Game of the Year Edition depends on whether they liked the first game. Those who found the original overwhelming or uninspiring will want to skip the expansion. However, RPG fans who liked the open-ended gameplay and freedom of the first game will want to take a return trip-the two expansions with over 100 hours of new adventures coupled with the $30 price tag make this game one of the steals of the year.
Morrowind GOTY Edition is so big that it is relatively hard to cover all the elements connected with it. Starting with release dates, Morrowind was released in May of 2002, Tribunal in September of that year while Bloodmoon expansion in February 2003.
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