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Interview with Pete Hines, Marketing Manager Bethesda

RECENSIONE di La Redazione   —   28/03/2002


1) After various years spent in the game's development, how much has the title's plot been modified, without considering the technological side? Has the choice of a title's production for a console influenced the story? As regards the murders, betrayals, love stories and anything else present in Daggerfall's atmosphere, is there something similar in Morrowind?

The game has obviously changed some during the design and development phases, but the game we have created is very true to our original vision. The impact of the console has only been positive. We never attempted to change the content of the game in any way because we started working on the Xbox version. Rather, doing the game on a console has helped us optimize the PC version is a lot of ways and has produced a better game as a result.

Morrowind is a much richer, more defined experience than Daggerfall. You can’t help but sense that everything in the world was put together by hand, and that’s because it was. The end result is that the characters you meet and talk to, the quests you undertake, and the places you visit all fit together much better than they ever did in Daggerfall.

2) Can you gain Experience Points only murdering and completing the quests or will be there a more logical increase (such as ability - > consequencial ability improvement)?

Rather than giving you experience points for killing a creature or NPC, Morrowind focuses on the skills you choose during character creation. So, if you create a character that uses numerous stealth skills (ie, Security and Sneak) then you will improve you character by successfully using those skills. You have 5 major and 5 minor skills, and only be improving these skills are you able to raise your level.

That doesn’t mean you are limited to those skills. You still have 17 other miscellaneous skills, and you can practice and use these, but they won’t ever help you level up.

3) How long lasts the game? Is it possible to play it "forever" without solution of continuity?

Yes, you can play Morrowind “forever” if you wanted to. The game is completely open-ended and finishing the main quest does not end the game. It will take the average players up to 100 hours to finish the main quest, depending on how many “side quests” they choose to do along the way. However, you can play the game for several hundred hours without ever playing the main quest. Once you add up all the faction and miscellaneous quests in the game, plus the main quest, plus all of the extra content that will be available to download as a plugin, you can play Morrowind as long as you like and always have new experiences.

4) Do you want to support the game with new quests, regions, NPC and downloaded objects freely or do you have planned some add- on?

We expect there to be a LOT of plugins once the Morrowind community gets their hands on the TES Construction Set. We do not have plans to release any ourselves. I’m sure some members of the development team will have some that they will do once the game is finished, but right now everything we’re doing is focused on finishing Morrowind and making it the best game it can be.