Morrowind: Tribunal Review
Played on:
Windows
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind is definitely one of the best role-playing titles on the PC in the last couple of years. Even those who wound up disliking it had to admit that its game world was immense and greatly detailed; it overwhelmed the player with places to go, quests to complete, and organizations to join. On top of that, player-created enchantments, spells, and potions allowed people to customize their character far beyond what most single player RPGs allow. And while the Tribunal expansion pack is fun to play, it lacks the scale that Morrowind had.
The main reasons you would want to bother with Tribunal revolve around the ongoing story and the new areas to explore. There are a few new kinds of armor as well as a handful of new weapon types, but the cities of Mournhold and Sotha Sil are what players will want this game for.
There isn't much to say here; Tribunal holds the same system requirements as Morrowind did, and also taxes your computer about the same amount. There are a few large underground environments and a couple of new visual effects that are impressive, but that's about it. The engine looks as good as ever, and the game continues to make great use of it, so it is tough to fault Bethesda that much in this category.
Tribunal adds the ability to put notes on your map, but they are easily lost if the notes are attached to some random place out in the countryside. Maybe Bethesda should have displayed a list of notes and supplied a compass arrow to help you get to that point on the map where a note was written. The way it is, I found it only marginally useful in cities. It was basically a waste of time when travelling.
The journal is also enhanced a bit, allowing you a way to look through both the quests you are still working on and the ones you've already completed. This was sorely needed back in Morrowind, and now it's finally here. Of course, Tribunal isn't big enough to really need the new journal, so it's mostly an enhancement for the original game. In my opinion, this should have been part of a patch to the original game, not saved for the expansion.
The city of Mournhold, which is the place you'll spend most of your time in Tribunal, looks excellent. It's bigger than most of the cities in the original game; the problem is that it's the only real city in the expansion. Sure, the Clockwork City of Sotha Sil looks good, and I don't want to give any of the plot away, but I will just say that it's not much of a city. The caves, sewers, and other locales under Mournhold are pretty well done, even if these are about the only adventuring locations in the whole expansion.
There are several new monsters in Tribunal, and they all fit in well with the overall theme. The goblins that reside in the sewers look particularly good, while some of the other enemies down there are only mediocre. It's the large, more open types of caverns that will catch your eye more than anything else.
New weapons and armor types are also included in Tribunal, and they do look pretty impressive. At first, only the guards carry it, but you'll get your own chance at these types of armor towards the end of the expansion.
The gameplay in Morrowind was something that some players loved and others hated. It was completely wide open, and while you did have a specific main quest to go on, you usually would have to go out on other quests to become powerful enough to beat the game. This meant exploring and adventuring on your own, joining various guilds and raising through the ranks of various organizations. The game world in Tribunal, though, is much smaller; it's completely separated from the original world, and while there's a pretty wide range of areas to check out, it's very cramped compared to Morrowind. On top of that, the organizations you can join in Tribunal are pretty bare-bones, with little in the line of good quests or rewards.
There is a similar quest structure in this expansion; quests range from simple errand runs to the epic main story. Here, though, the main quest is shorter, although the fights are much harder. Players whose characters aren't very powerful are going to have to leave and come back when they're tougher, sometimes even only an hour or two into the main quest.
Bethesda has put in a few of the major things that you see in many player-created Morrowind mods: pack animals, NPCs that you can hire to tag along and fight with you, and more well-rounded quests that aren't all adventuring and combat. They did a decent job with this, although I think that a new manor for your character to own would have been wonderful; after all, that's pretty much the most popular type of custom Morrowind mod out there.
There's a museum that you can sell quite a few of the game's most powerful items at, which gives you the chance to make some big chunks of money at a time. They will take specific items from both Tribunal and from Morrowind, although the list isn't very long. I also found at least one bug with this system; in-game there is a book with a list of items they buy, and the Daedric Crescent Blade weapon is in this list. The problem is that there is no way to actually sell or donate it to the museum. Other items work fine, though, and there is even a quest involving donating items. It means you might have to give up a prized possession in order to keep the game going, although nothing stops you from just stealing it back from the museum.
One relief is that this time around, many of the vendors have a larger store of gold to buy your normal items with. You'll still have to use a few tricks, which some people consider cheating, to sell most of your high-dollar items.
Tribunal does include a fairly large area for adventuring and levelling, although it's small compared to the rest of Morrowind. Either way, it's not exactly great - for general adventuring and levelling up, you'll likely find yourself back on Vvardenfell, the original game's main land mass. There are no large outdoor areas to explore here, either; in fact, the only outdoor areas in the whole expansion are those inside Mournhold itself, and those are walled-off spaces separated by loading screens anyway. Morrowind gave players a feeling of outdoor freedom that made the world feel alive - by comparison, Tribunal will make players feel almost claustrophobic.
Even though Bethesda has added a decent amount of new content with Tribunal, there are some things missing that I expected. There are no new playable races, skills, or birthsigns, and I didn't manage to find any new enchantments or major new spell types. There are new spells, but custom spellmaking from the original game is far more useful anyway. Because of this, Tribunal feels like half an expansion - especially when the scope of the original game is considered.
Tribunal's ending is definitely good, although the whole thing is over a bit abruptly a little after the big fight is finished. And once it's over, you're left just like you started, but with a few more levels & some extra gear. Beating Morrowind's main quest made you feel powerful, as people you talked to respected you highly. At the end of Tribunal, though, you're still just an adventurer in the eyes of the residents of Mournhold, despite what one might expect after winning the last fight.
The Tribunal expansion is a bit light on the sounds, although the production quality on the voice acting is as good as ever. Many of the NPCs in Mournhold have lots of new things to say, and some of the speech even pertains to certain quests you've done for those NPCs. Despite that, other characters still repeat sayings quite a bit, and for anyone who is a bit tired of being called an outlander (even by NPCs that are obviously outlanders themselves) in the original game, it's still somewhat annoying.
The sound effects for the new monsters fit in with the game nicely, and most of them are brand new. Quite a few of the ambient sounds for the underground areas you traverse are reused from the original game, though. Tribunal also adds no new music, which was definitely disappointing. It isn't that Morrowind's music was bad; the problem I had was that there wasn't enough of it, so the same songs would repeat too often. Bethesda had the chance to turn it around here, but didn't do so.
Many of the things that made me love Morrowind so much are simply missing in Tribunal. For your dollar value, this expansion just doesn't add enough to what is already a massive, excellent game. Once Tribunal drops into the fifteen-dollar range, then I would consider it worth it. Bethesda says that this expansion adds between twenty and forty hours of gameplay, although I found that to be more like fifteen to twenty-five. Players may also be frustrated to have to return to the original game to level up, especially since the last half of Tribunal will require quite a powerful character.
If this was just another expansion for just another run-of-the-mill RPG or FPS, I might not have been so disappointed. The problem here is that Tribunal is just not enough game when you consider how much you got in the original package. When you compare this to other games' expansion packs, it falls mostly in line; the problem is that it's simply not as good as the original game. I suggest that you only get this if you are just dying for new Morrowind gameplay and have the money burning a hole in your pocket.
