Morrowind is... a specific thing. A curious case indeed. It is in the end not a good game. It does have some good things in it, mainly good ideas and concepts. Great Houses are, well, great, some other factions as well. The world just oozes atmosphere if you can get just enough of a grip on the gameplay to survive, go on and not be in constant pain (which can be hard to do for someone raised on different type of games). Design is just flawless, and by that I mean all of the design that you stumble across - especially architecture. However there is a huge but to all of this. Game lacks depth in places where experienced players can and should expect it. Quests are very, very, very shallow when it comes to structure, even though some are thematically interesting (it tells much that House Telvanni quests are usually most entertaining). Interesting NPCs are, well, in practice non-existent. In theory you do, contrary to some popular opinions, stumble across one or two amusing characters. Caius Cosades, Uncle Crassius (Curio), Divayth Fyr, some Telvanni magisters… Yeah, there are some folks that have personalities – when I think about it most of the high-end people from the factions have some, Archmage Trebonius is a famous derp, there are some interesting dynamics in the Mages Guild or the Fighters Guild… Problem is, there are hundreds of NPCs in this fucking game, and I think I could count the really fleshed ones out on both of my hands. I’m obviously not counting Vivec, Dagoth Ur and the gang because that’s a whole another matter. So, there are good ideas, great atmosphere, but all of this extremely refined piece of a game is in the end empty inside when you look at it from a standpoint of someone who played, I don’t know, V:tM:B or Planescape: Torment. You do need to like the Bethesda style gameplay to enjoy Morrowind, if you don’t then you don’t enjoy this game as a game. Or you need to be a sick motherfucking larper. One of the two I guess.
However! There is one more thing. Morrowind is I think a unique case of a game where there are a lot of people who do not like it for what it is, I mean who do not like it for how good of a game it is, but who like it because of… other things which are hard to define for me. Let’s get around this to reach the point. In the case of Morrowind you are unable to in-game capitalize on your knowledge of the world, said knowledge, called, ahem, LORE by some, that you can stumble across the internet or discover yourself in the game by reading obscure texts and deciphering the Lessons. Morrowind can be seen as a highly imperfect way of showing the last part of the great tragedy (story of Nerevar) which you are invited subtly to experience, but which, when you strictly play the main quest, is not so prominent as it becomes when you delve into things in- and out of the game. In this way Morrowind is one of a time deal which wasn’t and will not be made again probably. You cannot just come to Vivec and say “Hey d00de, I deciphered the Sermons using the code from the Lesson of Numbers and I know what you wrote you did”. You cannot do that in game. You cannot truly discuss things with Dagoth Ur, you cannot confront many of the plot dilemmas that present themselves when you read the lore. You cannot do all the things in game which are the most interesting about its plot, its characters and its story. From a designer perspective this reached an absurd levels of obscurity, there were some official translations in which most of the more esoteric stuff was just plainly absent because translators weren’t informed of it by Bethesda, and because of that obscure, hidden lore was just lost in the translation – I know of Polish one that did it. And best thing is, they weren’t informed most probably because in the Bethesda itself not everybody knew… But that’s I think the point. If that would be a gameplay thing everybody would knew about it, it would be in official and popular walkthroughs. Morrowind by not making its most interesting thing part of the game in strict sense made it hidden and available only for those who got really hooked up on things, and on one thing in particular – on this that this game is not about you, this game is about the last, tint act of the thousand-in-game-years old story, and main players of said story are not PCs. Most people who praise Morrowind as a classic are ones who embraced this strange design structure and do not see the game as a game, but as just another way of experiencing this out-of-the-medium story.
So, either you realize that the game is flawed and mediocre, or you are fucking retarded and either like Bethesda style or are a fucking larper, or you become the ultimate autist and embrace the CHIM.
Ending of the words is KIRKBRIDE.