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

Morrowind is an absolutely crazy game. This was a game made by a studio who thought they were done for, so it's a game where they threw absolutely everything they could at it. It's a game with an insane number of quests, and more named NPCs than in Oblivion and Skyrim COMBINED. And it's not like the quests you do get are poorly thought out, or lacking depth or emotional impact. There's a quest where you're asked to escort a slave to a location. If you do that, she's immediately murdered and opened up so they can get the stash of drugs they've hidden in her body. This game has some of the DARKEST and most messed up content of possibly any mainstream game. Like puzzles? You can literally view the entirety of Morrowind as one large puzzle game. There's a series of 36 books about the life of Vivec, and every one is a skill book, so (if you min/max like me) you'll probably not collect them all until you've nearly maxed all your skills. Not only do these books tell such an insane story that it would never have been allowed in a game like this if it hadn't been hidden in actual books you have to read, but the 36 books together make one entire puzzle you can solve. (or you could just cheat and read the lore page about Vivec on the wiki) Morrowind is still a game from the tail end of an era where you'd literally use a pen and notebook to track clues and what you were doing, so the journal reflects this. This does bother a lot of people. It'll say something like "Kaye told me to go and find this item" and you'll have to remember for yourself who Kaye is, and where you met him. Directions are given in the way people would actually give directions, which lots of people find frustratingly vague. Sometimes the questgivers even get confused, and mess up a direction. One thing to be aware of is the character speed. If you don't optimise a character build for speed, you'll almost always create the slowest possible character. If you build the character for speed, they'll be over 2.5 times faster right from the start, which is a massive massive difference. Pick 'The Steed' as the star sign on a first play through. It will make the game far more fun. Preferably also a race and class with bonuses to speed and athletics. Another thing that's often said about Morrowind is that there's no fast travel. There's actually at least nine different ways to fast travel, and as you learn the world, it becomes easier and easier to get from one place to another. You even learn how to combine the different methods into a travel network, so that difficult trips in the early game become little 'micro puzzles' where you can work out quick ways to get nearly anywhere. The balance of the game is kind of interesting. As you go on, you almost break the game automatically. Even taking intended in-game mechanics, many simple potion effects just stack, so you can drink 50 potions and become game-breakingly powerful. The game presents you with examples of literally broken jump scrolls just a few steps outside the starting area that would let you jump halfway across the continent. Alchemy only needs the slightest nudge to become absurdly powerful. Enchanting is the same. There are exploits EVERYWHERE, and it's a game that's quite happy to let you use them. On top of all that, this is a game that's been getting heavily modded for decades, and one mod in particular, Tamriel Rebuilt, is a contender for the largest mod for any game ever, more or less doubling the amount of content. So when thinking about buying the game, you also have to consider that you also get access to all that as well. There's a few negatives, like lingering bugs (pickpocketing in morrowind has always been broken and never fixed) but in contrast to the depth of story, variety of creatures and areas, and amount of beautifully crafted content, it's pretty much a 'must play' if you like these types of games.