6. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
Bethesda Softworks | Bethesda Softworks | 2002
A huge and hugely deep first-person RPG, set on a massive freely explorable island riddled with history, prophecy and intrigue
What made it so great?
This is a truly freeform RPG: the main plotline is a series of quests that you needn't take at all and indeed there's hundreds of hours of fascinating quests and adventures to be found just from wandering around this vast land. If you do choose to take on the epic quest to save this world from an evil God at its heart, there's masses to learn and hundreds of characters whose help you'll need along the way. But the game never forces you to do any of it: there's nothing to stop you from walking from the dock at which you're first dropped to the ante-chamber of the final boss, except that defeating him is going to be a little tricky.
Even that's not impossible, though: the game's crime, magic, alchemy and combat systems are so open-ended that it's possible to steal, drug or cheat your way to an incredible victory far beyond your level. And why stop at vanquishing the evil God? The natives' ruler and semi-deity is right there at the temple in their capital city and like everyone in the game he can be killed by anyone strong enough - or clever enough - for the job.
Get ready to play
Put your glasses on and apply the patches: there's a lot of reading in Morrowind, since the dialogue isn't voice-acted. The patches do more than just bug-fixing: they dramatically increase the game's frame-rate and good news, as the graphics often look striking even today. A wide range of free official add-ons from Bethesda are available from www.elderscrolls.com and all are worth installing before you get started.
Been there, done that?
If your graphics card is up to it and you can cope with the slightly artificial-feeling auto-leveling system, Morrowind's sequel Oblivion is your next quest. The two plots don't connect - every Elder Scrolls game is a self-contained story in the same universe - but the freedom, wide-open magic and crime systems are all intact.
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