Old jewels with maximal FSAA/AF: The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind

What is the first thing you think about if you hear The Elder Scrolls III - Morrowind? Mercury possibly. Or more exact: "Mercury” water. Morrowind was one of the first games that used Shader effects, even if only owners of a Geforce 3 could utilize them. Since the gameworld, the island of Vvardenfell, is naturally surrounded by water, the developers at Bethesda Softworks paid extra attention to the visualization of this particular element. The "Mercury” water isn't realistic actually, but the pseudo reflections are still looking charming today and have been a novelty as well as state-of-the-art in 2002.

Besides this outstanding feature the Morrowind engine also offers other visual delicacies like dynamic weather: From bright sunshine to pouring rain to sandstorms everything is possible. The architectures of the cities have been quite individual, too: medieval timber-framed houses, oriental curvatures and the giant city of Vivec - Morrowind had been ahead of its time in this regard, too. But sharp textures and a big range of visibility couldn't belie the low variety of opponents, the annoying loading times when entering buildings or the emptiness of the gameworld. Although the latter one didn't really become obvious because of the time cycle.

Regardless of the relative low resolution of only 1,280 x 960 pixels, Morrowind really stresses our 3.0 GHz Core 2 processor and the Geforce 8800 Ultra. The framerate often dropped below the 30 fps limit - 32xS with TSSAA and 32:1 AF are too much even for this graphics card. Additionally the Morrowind engine also gets even up-to-date COUs to their keens because of the way it is programmed.

In 2006 a Morrowind successor, Oblivion, was published and in 2010 the next part of The Elder Scrolls series will probably attract thousands of RPG fans.