The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition

陶德是我爹

Morrowind was the first RPG I ever played, and it shaped my gaming baseline. Every RPG I played after it, and honestly a lot of games in general, have been measured against what Morrowind offered. It set the standard for me, and even today there aren't many games that capture the same feeling. The biggest thing that made Morrowind stand out was the amount of freedom it gave the player. You're the main character, but the game never forces you to play a certain way. You can walk in any direction and have a completely different experience than someone who went another way. Every playthrough can feel different because the game gives you choices instead of constantly pushing you toward the next objective. Your character can wear almost anything, use almost anything as a weapon, have complete control over magic, and be built however you want. If you want to become a warrior, you can. If you want to become a powerful mage and create ridiculous custom spells, you can do that too. If you want to mix everything together into your own unique build, the game lets you. It never feels like you're locked into one playstyle. You can follow the main quest if that's what you want, or ignore it completely and spend dozens or even hundreds of hours exploring. Join different factions, hunt down rare artifacts, clear out caves and ruins, or simply wander the island to see what you find. You can build a house full of treasures in a tiny mud shack, or kill the inhabitants of a manor and claim it as your own. The game lets you create your own stories instead of simply following the one it lays out for you. Looking back, I'm not sure there was another game like it when it came out. It was doing things that felt years ahead of its time. The amount of player freedom, exploration, and role-playing was unlike anything I had experienced, and that's why Morrowind has remained one of the most important games I've ever played. Even after all these years, it still sets the bar for what I want from an RPG.

epic

9 / 10 (vanilla mode) For me, it's tied with SKYRIM as the very best ELDER SCROLLS game ever. Dabbled with this game before on my CD discs copy, and having a go again this time for dozens of hours, this is still loads of fun to play today, and in some ways, it's still a beautiful game to play today. Dated graphics with lots of flat ground textures, but even with the dated graphics, the environments and creatures are incredible. Many fantasy RPGs I've played often have some of the same tropes like castles, dragons, caves, fields, wolf like creatures, giant spiders, etc. And in some ways, that is true to an extent with SKYRIM and OBLIVION where the environments were mostly conventional. But when you play MORROWIND, you really feel you are exploring a whole brand new world. Even just running around the world with the Blinding Boots of Speed (with magical resistance to my character), I kept stumbling across locations and interiors where my eyes suddenly bulged in awe. Incredibly imaginative and exotic environments, a lot of environmental designs and creatures really do look native to MORROWIND instead of copying things from other games. As for the basic gameplay, it is very playable once you get the hang of the character creation stuff, how the gameplay rules work, and it becomes much easier when you get the Blinding Boots of Speed. Combat is not as refined as SKYRIM's, but there is still decent combat gameplay anyway (with some areas that are no go areas until you are strong and endurable enough). I often have to bribe other characters in order to progress my quests without killing anyone, lol. And MORROWIND doesn't hold your hand too much like with SKYRIM. You have to really explore and figure out solutions to some problems of the quests like when characters refuse to do something. I'm only halfway through the main storyline (I'm at the point where I have to get proclaimed titles from Ashlander camps and councillor people). I previously played much of it on my CD discs copy (and I still have it for using its instruction manual and its lovely physical map). Difficulty mode has been at least Normal and upscaled it quite harder, when I started finding killing creatures in the wilderness way too easy. I do want to finish the main quest at some point, and maybe go to the additional island as part of the expansion pack. There have been various expansion mods, and I'm really looking forward to the SKYWIND mod (if it ever comes out). MORROWIND would've been 10/10 if it had the minor improvements of SKYRIM like the combat system, and if it ironed out its technical flaws such as glitching Cliff Racers and its repetitive soundtrack (which itself is very good, but repetitive).

10/10

I just completed the main story and yes it's a slow-paced game if you are playing without a guide or googling but because of this slowness Morrowind became my second beloved-doomed world. Overall it's a damn good game.

Morrowind best ES lowkey. Only matched by Enderal.