The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Graphics 10/10
*Drools some more*
Now this is cutting edge stuff in the home gaming industry. Everything is realistic, even the water (assuming you have pixel shading on, but even then…). It looks like you can just step into your screen and walk and not notice the change from reality to virtual reality. All in-game objects are 3D rendered and displayed in 32bit color mode, getting rid of the 2D sprites used in Daggerfall. Of, course the stunning graphics come at a price: You will need a muscle machine to display everything with the settings at full. To even play the game with settings at mid-to-low range, your computer will have to have some decent specs, including a 32BM 3D accelerator (You might scrape by with a 16, as I scraped by with 8MB on the older of my two systems).

Sound/Music 9/10
This is some good stuff. The music, composed by Jeremy Soule, is mesmerizing. All NPC’s (at least the ones I have met) have something to say (though most conversation is held in a dynamic text box). Though perhaps not as good as its graphics, the sound compliments the graphics to a great extent.

Gameplay 9/10
While its different then most at first, the standard control layout becomes becomes intuitive and easy to use in the 3D world. While I had originally though combat would suffer from the new system that uses directional movement to determine attack type, I now prefer it over Daggerfall’s “swing-with-the-mouse” method.

Story 10/10
This is where The Elder Scrolls series shines through. While there is a good main quest for player characters to work at ( I won’t reveal, no spoilers from me), Morrowind is a fairly non-linear, open-ended game that will have you playing for years doing just the side-quests, doing what you want the entire the time (The class/guild system is similar to that of Daggerfall’s).

Replayability 10/10
The open-ended system itself will keep people playing for years, but the Constructor Set makes the replayability of this game unfathomable.