The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind - Xbox

Size matters.

Perhaps no issue gets our panties in a bunch like linear gameplay. At this point in the history of game design, we want to see software that gives gamers the choice to create their own experience, not just walk through the pretty pictures the designers came up with. We want freedom without sacrificing story. We want more GTA 3, really.

And if this is the case, then we also want The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, as it's the most expansive role-playing game to grace a console system anywhere.

But it's not just big, folks - it's really, really, REALLY big. Like an estimated 600 hours of gameplay big. Like so big, you could play the game for solid weeks and barely see half of the world. And thankfully, it's also darn good. Despite some hitches along the way, this is a massive journey that any Xbox owner simply can't afford to miss.

Morrowind is the third in the Elder Scrolls series, following the ancient Arena and the classic Daggerfall. It's very much in the tradition of these games in terms of programming, freedom and open-ended gameplay, though it ups the ante in terms of delivery.

I think the best way to describe Morrowind is that it's really built for you to explore, not for you to complete. The start of the game is great. You arrive in the land of Vvardenfell by ship, a lowly outlander just trying to survive. At this point, you don't know who you are at all. Soon enough, you'll have to check in at the Census office and by way of seamlessly interwoven question and answer, pick your race, gender, class and birth sign.

You'll know that things are different here when you consider the whopping 10 races to choose from, each with distinct abilities and attributes. That's further specialized when you pick a class. Morrowind gets brownie points for including a very clever option that has you answering a list of moral questions in order to determine what class best suits you. Alternately, you can pick your own or mix and match, a daunting task for any but the most hardcore gamer.

However, you can't really choose incorrectly, as the game breaks down the confinements of the class system by rewarding repetition, much in the same way as Ultima Online. With practice, a mage can learn to use an axe. A thief can learn to cast fireballs. It won't be easy (though you can probably find someone willing to train you for some coin), but any type of race or class can master any skill set in the game.

To counter this, Morrowind features a trillion skills, ranging from the obvious like 'Long Sword' and 'Destruction Spells' to obscure abilities like 'Mercantile' (haggling) and 'Alchemy.' Take some mushrooms, buy (or steal) a mortar and pestle, and try making some potions. Drinks are on the house!

Once you're set with your character, you're on your own. Literally. You're swept out into the street with a note to deliver to a guy in a town far away, which does give you some direction, but you don't remotely have to follow it.

In fact, you don't have to do anything. Want to stroll around the countryside picking mushrooms? Go ahead. Want to take a swim? Have a blast. Feel like stealing a sword from a shopkeeper? Feel free! Er, provided you're willing to pay the consequences should you fail, which means either paying off your sin in gold or spending some time in lockup, which degrades your skills a tad.

Yep, that's right. Jail. You can be a bad guy if you want, robbing and maiming the innocent. The game is geared to just allow you to exist however you see fit, and though there are obvious benefits to being good over being evil, you can be either and succeed all the same. The point here is that you do not have to follow any specific path in this game. You can pretty much take any road you wish... and Morrowind will fill it with things for you to do.

Speaking of roads, there are lots of them. Vvardenfell is simply gigantic, featuring literally hundreds of towns, cities, farms, caves, forts, tombs, dungeons and more. To give you a sense of the size and scope of this game, I spent well over 40 hours playing Morrowind, only actually seeing about 6 cities spanning areas covering roughly one quarter of the game world. I've done a lot, for sure - my Dark Elf will kick your ass - but at the same time I have hardly scratched the surface.

Every single city is populated with unique characters with unique stories, names and looks. Though obviously there's some repetition here, there are enough quests in the game to make every area feel different and important.

And you can be sure that you'll undertake plenty of quests, but not all of them will have to do with the Main Story. Actually, very few of them have anything to do with the plot (yes, there is a plot tucked away here somewhere). You might join a guild (Mage's, Fighter's, Thieves) and run errands to increase your rank. You might want to become an Imperial officer, or a Knight protector, or a Temple priest, or none of the above. Again, it's up to you.

On the other hand, all this freedom comes at a cost - too many choices. This is a frightening game for gamers who like direction (even GTA 3 had a fairly obvious mission structure). There will definitely be some of you who will turn the game on, get spit out into the street, wander around for a bit and eventually get bored because the game isn't creating enough drama for you on its own.

This isn't helped by the fact that the game employs no FMV at all to flesh out important plot points. You don't get rewarded with cut scenes or get big panoramic sweeps of new areas. The lack of these classic plot devices takes away from the story of Morrowind and can lead to a game that feels a little redundant.

This enormous world is shown to you through either a first or third person camera, both of which are useful. Surprisingly, the Xbox control is excellent. You'll run around swapping through menus with ease, and the screen is rarely cluttered with nonsense. It's clean and functional.

The same can be said for the graphics. Morrowind is reminiscent of GTA 3 in that its graphics don't really amaze so much as impress. Areas flow into one another with only occasional load screens (unless you take a 'stilt strider', a giant bug used for travel between towns). The water effects are nice and the textures are decent, though the characters move a bit jerkily and the animations are very simple. You also might find some framerate drops during particularly cluttered bits. But again, it's all about size, and the fact that the game holds up trying to process so much information attests to smart programming.

The entire game is real-time, so combat essentially boils down to flat out action. This is one of the game's poor spots. Most melee combat is easier in first-person thanks to a targeting reticule, which means you're moving towards and away from your opponent just swinging like mad. The analog trigger allows for three different kinds of swings, but there are no advanced moves or combos at all. This is sort of a letdown, as combat can wind up a bit mundane and a little too much like a first-person Diablo.

The combat also brings up the game's most irritating omission - a lack of any sort of hit point meter for enemies. Sure, my Fiend Katana does up to 20 points of damage, but why is that info useful if I don't even have a little meter to watch as I smite my foe? You'll know you hit 'em, but you'll have no idea how much damage you did or how close the baddies are to dying. It gets frustrating... and the developers knew it, since they fixed it in the PC version thanks to a patch.

Though we here at GR go off all the time about the lack of voice-acting in RPGs, it's sort of hard holding that against Morrowind because of the amount of information it contains. Every single character in the game - thousands, easy - has a voiced greeting. A few of the key players have more elaborate speech, but the bulk of the time you'll be reading text. It can admittedly get tiresome, but again, there's just hours and hours of stuff to soak up. You can read every book you might find in the game (there are a LOT of books), some of which have close to 50 pages detailing past events in the universe that have no bearing on gameplay at all.

The rest of the sound is fine, with epic, sweeping music and decent effects.

I can go on for days about this game. I could talk about the impressive numbers of unique items, the thrill of murdering an innocent and getting away with it, the fact that you can even make your own spells. But why spoil it? Morrowind is all about your personal experience with it, and although there are some small problems, it's the biggest, deepest, most detailed RPG yet created for the consoles, and for that reason alone is worth your time and money.