Morrowind lets you create a character one of three ways. Simply choosing which class you would like to become, answering a series of questions that define your personality; with your class chosen upon those answers, or your very own custom class in which you make the rules. Quite an impressive start for what will be the most open ended game to come out for quite some time. You can chose between 10 different races, all with their unique stat modifications suited for what they do best. In addition, 21 specific classes you can choose from, not to mention being able to create your own, as well as give yourself your own occupational description. Some of the classes you can create are of course casters, melee, thieves, monks, and any mix of the following. Each playing an important role in the game. Each with their own special abilities. In addition, once you have chosen a class and race for your character, you again get to choose which birth sign you would like to be under. Each birth sign comes with additional abilities according to which one you pick. For example, a thief might want to choose the sign of the Shadow - in which you have the innate ability to become invisible for 60 seconds. Or, the sign of the thief in which you become harder to hit in combat.

Do you know where a guy can just take a leak?

Character development in Morrowind takes on a nice flavor. You will increase in base level, which will give you the option of increasing certain core statistics such as strength, Intelligence, etc. But where the game shines is the ability to increase 3 levels of abilities which are given rank in terms of how important they are in your class. These three levels of abilities are labeled Major skills, Minor Skills, and Misc. Skills. Major skills will be skills that you will need to use a lot to increase your power, with minor and Misc skills being self explanatory. You can increase these skills three different ways. One is to train with a character in the game spending gold, another would be to use the skill over and over, and a third would be to learn the skill increase by reading a book. For example, a thief class will want to sneak as a major skill. To increase that skill I will steal more from under the noses of characters, pay to increase the skill, or open a book on sneaking in a library. Each skill will tell you how close to a level increase it is at, simply by putting the cursor over the skill in the character menu. All this sound complicated as hell? Well, after about an hour you will be flying through this world and know exactly what I am talking about.

Everything a growing Assassin needs. Got milk?