With more than 100 hours
of gameplay and a powerful editor that has spawned dozens of
high-quality fan-made plugins, Morrowind was not a likely candidate
for an official expansion. For this reason, I approached Tribunal
with mixed feelings. I reasoned that Bethesda (the developer of the
game) was either very foolish or had an ace up its sleeve, having
the courage to release an expansion pack. I was wrong: Bethesda was
not acting foolish, nor did they deliver a real winner. Tribunal
is an excellent expansion, fully worth its price, but still falls
short of expectations because of a few balancing and technical
issues.
Playing the game
When you first launch the Tribunal expansion, you will be
treated to a coffee break. Tribunal comes with changes to
your journal, which will allow you to filter out unfinished quests.
The operation of modifying your journal can take a very long time,
depending how far in the game you have progressed. In my case, even
my uber-powerful computer took over ten minutes to complete this
procedure; enough for a quick snack and a fresh cup of coffee.
Fortunately, this is only a one-time operation.
Once you are in the game,
you will notice no changes to the gameplay. The same monsters will
appear on the map, the same quests remain, and not even the sound or
graphics change. The interface will be different, though. You will
have an improved map and journal. In the case you didn't install
some of the latest Morrowind patches, you will be treated to a slide
bar that will allow you to adjust the game's difficulty.
All this changes when you
decide to take a well-deserved break. Caught napping, you will be
attacked by a mysterious assassin or two, who will make you work
hard for your life. Even if you've finished the main quest and are
able to strike down the all-powerful Golden Saints with two strokes
of your mighty sword, these assassins will pose a much greater
threat. If you survive, you may think of reporting the incident to a
guard. However, maybe you were a naughty boy (or girl), and your
backpack is full of stolen stuff the guards ought not to not see. In
that case, however, you will quickly change your mind after
subsequent attacks of growing difficulty. You consult a guard, and
through a series of contacts, will end up talking to a mage who
offers you free transport to Mournhold, the capital of Morrowind.
As soon as you arrive in
this magnificent city, you will be thrust into the web of political
intrigue of the highest grade, where a goddess and a new king spar
over the future of Morrowind. Caught between the proverbial rock and
a hard place, you will serve two masters, often on missions to
weaken one another. You will explore the city, and the seemingly
endless dungeons underneath the town. You will get to fight new,
exotic beasts, but also find better equipment to aid you in the
battles. You will have the option to take on a multitude of side
quests. If you are diligent, you will get up to 60 hours of gameplay
out of this expansion. Even if you concentrate only on the main
quest, you will get up to 30 hours out of it, which is more than
many full-priced games offer.
What's new The
expansion offers some improvements to the interface, gameplay, as
well as some new content.
Interface improvements
As mentioned before, the journal got a makeover. One of the main
complaints of most fans was that the journal was very confusing. At
the time I finished the main quest of Morrowind, I was stuck with
over 200 pages of notes, covering everything that happened to me.
Finding quests in these notes was almost impossible. As a
consequence, I often forgot about some quests until I triggered them
again, by accident. The new journal offers a great improvement: from
now on, the player is able to select all quests, or only those that
are unfinished. However, this improvement should have been included
in a patch instead of forcing gamers pay for it. The journal
interface is still cumbersome to use, and quite buggy. For example:
some of the quests that I finished prior to installing Tribunal
have reappeared as unfinished, and quests from user-created
modifications aren't recognized at all. The latter is an especially
serious problem, as many gamers download and install multiple
modifications at once. I am currently running six user-created
separate storylines, and I still have to use a pen and paper to keep
track of these quests. Finally, as my personal gripe, I would like
to mention the inability to sort quests by location. Right now,
whenever I arrive to a new location, I always scroll through the
list of open quests to find out whether I can finish any on my
current location or not. Being able to do it automatically would be
a great bonus.
The second major
improvement to the interface is the new map annotation system. When
you double-click on a map, you will be able to leave a note at that
rotation, which becomes visible as you position the mouse cursor
over the note. This is a great addition to the game, especially in
large cities where I used to visit the same locations over and over
again, in a futile effort to find a particular item or person. This
improvement should have been included in a patch as well, and works
only on local maps, and not the global one.
You will notice the third
interface improvement when you barter with somebody. A new "seller
max" button will automatically allow you to set the sale price to
whatever the trader has on him. Considering the fact that many
traders in Morrowind are short on cash, and you will often try to
sell high-priced items, this button is a lifesaver. No more holding
the "price decrease" button for five minutes when you are trying to
sell a 40,000 sword to a trader who has only 400 in cash...
Those who did not
download Morrowind patches will be treated to two more improvements.
The first is a sliding bar, which will allow you to set the
difficulty (zero is the normal difficulty, -100 is the easiest and
+100 the hardest difficulty). The second improvement is a health bar
for your enemy, which appears every time you strike him. This allows
you to finally keep track on how your combat is going.
Improvements to
gameplay There is one great improvement to gameplay: you will be
able to hire sidekicks.
The first type of
sidekicks for hire will be mercenaries, who will help you fight. You
will have to pay them a fee every month, and assure that your
adventures are profitable. You will be able to heal and equip them.
However, they may prove to be more trouble than they are worth.
Their main problem is inherent in the Morrowind engine - A.I.
pathfinding. Often, the mercenaries will get stuck behind objects or
will be unable to follow you because their jumping or climbing
abilities are too low. In addition, you will not be able to check
their status, and they may drop dead on you in any moment. The most
frustrating thing for me, however, was that in their infinite
wisdom, the designers neglected to mention to the mercenaries to
stay out of my line of sight. I ended up killing one of my
mercenaries by accident, while shooting arrows at an approaching
enemy. Being able to issue basic commands, such as "do not engage
until I fight in close combat" would help.
The second group of
sidekicks are pack animals. One of the complaints players had was
that they could carry a very limited amount of equipment.
Fortunately, pack animals solve this problem. They range from rats,
which can carry only a limited amount of equipment, to guars, which
carry much more than that. Unfortunately, the same pathfinding
problems plague the pack animals, and the rats are only cute when
they are not stuck within an object, forcing you to reload the game
or lose whatever they were carrying. I ended up having a guar for my
travels across Morrowind, but even on the wide roads the animal
would get stuck, especially when crossing bridges.
Both improvements to
gameplay have been already available as user-created modifications,
and thus should not be the reason to buy the expansion. The main
reason to do so should be the new content offered by Tribunal.
New content The
game offers a whole new city, several dungeons, monsters, equipment
items, quests and adventure objects.
The city of Mournhold is
impressive, but not exactly what I would expect from a capital city.
It houses only a few dozen people, and being unable to leave the
city gates, I could not confirm the existence of endless slums
behind the impossibly high walls, which I was expecting. The city
itself is very nicely laid out, with vast open expanses that serve
as public parks, huge palaces and some not-so-interesting houses.
However, it has been build on top of older cities, which now serve
as the hideouts for all kinds of nasties, and your ultimate
destination.
You will spend most of
the time underground. The dungeons range from the already familiar
sewers, through tombs and temples, to vast underground lakes. The
game offers several huge interconnected dungeons, and a few smaller
ones, but still impressive enough in the context of Morrowind.
People who've played Daggerfall (the precursor of Morrowind) were
disappointed not to find the same large dungeons in Morrowind, but
Tribunal changes this.
As far as monsters go,
Tribunal is a godsend for everybody who likes to tinker with the
game editor. While some monsters are used in great numbers, such as
various ranks of goblins, their domestic animals, and fabricants
(mechanical animal-like monsters), others are used more sparsely,
but are now freely available to mod-makers. For example: I counted
only two mummies, each of which gave me a run for my money. They
offered probably the toughest fight in the game. One of the
best-looking monsters, a phantasm (animated armor), was used only
once, as far as I can tell. All of those monsters were in the game
only to show them off to the mod-makers, which will most likely use
them to great advantage.
New equipment items
include some exotic swords, two full sets of new armor, and a few
artifacts. Probably the most available new item class will be armor,
as the game features two new armored guards - Royal Guard and High
Ordinators. However, a player who finished the main quest in
Morrowind will most likely have amassed a much better set of armor
than both these classes offer. Probably the most interesting item,
though, will be a brand-new sword you will get toward the end of the
expansion. This sword (which always burns with a magical fire) is so
powerful that I would encourage players to get it only after they've
cleared Morrowind, because it tends to tweak the balance of the
original game.
New quests are probably
the most unique aspect of the expansion. In addition to your classic
fedex, kill-the-monster and fetch-the-object quests, you will be
treated to some really unique experiences. For example, one quest
will put you in the role of an actor, give you only two minutes to
learn your lines, and kill you if you get them wrong on the stage.
Another quest will make you stalk a person, and yet another will
thrust you in the role of a bouncer in an inn. In addition, some
quests will branch out, allowing you several ways to achieve a given
result. For example, you will be asked to eradicate a band of
criminals. You will have the choice to confront them (and most
likely die) or simply flood their hideout in the sewers and drown
them. Or a beggar, whose further action depends on whether you give
him some money or brush him off, will approach you.
The quest structure is
very different from Morrowind. Whereas there the main quest was so
open-ended that I often forgot about it, the main quest in
Tribunal is as tight and linear as possible. While you will work
for both sides in this conflict, you will not be able to choose
sides, and at a certain moment simply switch to the other party.
While many Morrowind enthusiasts may frown upon this idea, I found
it very refreshing. The linearity of the quests has allowed the
designers to develop a much more coherent and engrossing story, and
a much better difficulty progression throughout the game. Where
Morrowind allowed the players to stop playing for a month or two and
pick up whenever they wanted, Tribunal will grip you and
won't let you go until you finish.
Adventure items are yet
another godsend to mod-makers. The expansion uses them quite freely,
but many of them are still novel enough to allow the fans to create
some original plugins. The game finally offers a set of traps,
ranging from blades that would decapitate you, through spike and
electrical traps, to proximity mines. This has allowed the designers
to abandon the pure hack-and-slash gameplay and add more
adventuring, with the help of more devious dungeons. In addition,
there are other objects, such as explosives with a timer, which will
make for great additions to some of the mods I have played.
Game balance That
said, I have to admit that the expansion is relatively unbalanced.
Not only that, it can significantly change the balance of Morrowind
as well. Bethesda has said that players can start Tribunal at
any level, and I am inclined to believe it. With the exception of
the assassin attacks, Tribunal is isolated from Morrowind,
allowing you to progress through the main quest without touching
Tribunal until you feel you are ready. However, these assassins
are enough to skew the balance of Morrowind. Their strength depends
on the player's level, so every fight with them is challenging, but
not impossible. However, they wear armor that players should not
have access to throughout the first third of Morrowind, which is not
only far better than what is available, but also can fetch a hefty
profit. I have already heard reports of gamers who were exploiting
this issue, in order to advance through the game much faster.
Once you arrive in
Mounrhold, you are up for even less balance. With the exception of
several initial quests, the player will have a very tough time
beating all the enemies. However, due to the very linear main quest,
some characters are more suited to beat the game than others. There
are very few monsters you will be required to kill, and as a
consequence, a stealth-based character will find the game very easy.
My Level 27 Assassin finished the main quest in Tribunal
without breaking a sweat, while my Level 53 Mage got killed several
times in the process. My fighter finished the game with some
problems at level 48, but I could hardly imagine a lower-level
fighter to survive the expansion. Considering the fact that
Morrowind offers almost opposite balancing issues, many players may
find Tribunal a little frustrating. Whereas Morrowind was
still exciting for my Assassin when he went to Mournhold, I ended up
hacking, slashing and frying countless low-level monsters with my
knight and mage, only to advance to a level where I could
successfully complete Tribunal.
Finally, as a personal
gripe of mine, I would like to say a word or two about the goblins,
which are the most common enemies in the game. In Morrowind,
Bethesda used very non-traditional role-playing animals. As such, I
would never question the designers on issues, such as why a Golden
Saint was stronger than a Winged Twilight. However, in Tribunal,
Bethesda has included one of the most common RPG monsters - the
goblins. Goblins are usually the first humanoid monsters a new
player encounters, right after he slashes his way through rats and
bats, and maybe the occasional snake. As such, they serve as cannon
fodder - anybody but the lowest-level character uses them for
practice and the occasional loot. In Tribunal, however,
goblins were anything but practice targets. Even the lowest class of
goblins was as tough as some of the nastiest monsters in Morrowind,
and the goblin leaders were stronger than anything I encountered in
the previous game. This may raise some objections among role-playing
enthusiasts.
Gameplay - 7
I must admit I prefer a more linear storyline than that offered in
Morrowind. The gameplay in Tribunal is much more engrossing,
and the new content, especially various traps and puzzles, make
dungeon crawling much more enjoyable. In addition, the game offers a
multitude of new, refreshingly different quests and lots of tough
opponents to try your luck on. However, the fact that the interface
improvements should have been released in a patch, makes me count
them out of the expansion. I had to subtract some points for the
balancing issues as well; Morrowind offers enough exploits, more of
them weren't necessary.
Graphics - 9
When I first heard about the expansion, I was very skeptical about
possible improvements in the graphics. The expansion was supposed to
add more content, and not modify the engine, and I could hardly
imagine the Morrowind graphics to be improved. I'm glad to admit
that I was wrong. Bethesda has paid meticulous attention to the
detail, and came up with some unique textures and architecture. The
expansion is much more colorful and bright than the original game,
which helps to keep your interest up. In addition, the Tribunal
offers a few new, unique graphics, such as cascading sparks, which
serve as lights. However, a single problem for the owners of ATI
Radeon cards, which forces them to edit Tribunal in the
construction set (an operation that took me half an hour, even
though I found a walkthrough on the Internet), has forced me to
subtract a point from the otherwise perfect graphics.
Sound - 7
Owners of Tribunal will be pleasantly surprised by new
voiceovers. Most players got bored with the same greetings they
always received from non-player characters; these greetings have now
been expanded dramatically, not only in variety, but also to reflect
your current status in the gaming world. However, the game offers no
new soundtrack tunes, and as much as I like the original soundtrack,
a new tune or two would have been refreshing. The main problem with
the soundis a bug that sometimes drastically increases the volume of
the sound. So, for example, your footsteps will be louder than a
thunderstorm overhead, or you will hear the sound of animals that
are half a continent away. The latter problem is especially
annoying, forcing you to look around for the source of the sound and
find nothing. Bethesda has addressed this issue in a patch,
unfortunately without any success, at least for me.
Replay value - 8
For its price, Tribunal strikes even on my worthiness scale,
offering at least an hour of gameplay for every dollar spent.
However, if you want to finish all side quests, the length of
gameplay doubles. The bulk of the replay value lies elsewhere,
though, in the slew of new monsters and adventuring objects. These
have started to find a way into various user-created modifications,
and will do so in the future.
Overall - 7.8
Tribunal is probably the best game expansion released in
2002. It offers more gameplay than many full-priced games. It
greatly expands on one of the greatest role-playing games of all
times. It tweaks the gameplay in some interesting ways, allowing for
more adventuring and less action, and for a more tightly controlled
main story. However, some improvements could have been released in a
patch instead, and some balancing issues may make the game a little
too easy or too frustrating, depending on the playing style. These
problems somewhat diminish the quality of this expansion, but I
would still recommend it to anybody who owns and enjoys Morrowind.
