Where are your Elder Scrolls Roots?

skrigger

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

TES III: Morrowind. It's depth, diversity and difficulty made it one of a kind for me.

Ilsabet

The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim

I played Skyrim because it was five bucks on Steam. At the time I had basically run out of things to do in my previous MMO of choice, so once I got interested in the world and the lore and all, it was easy to make the jump to the MMO version.

Emmagoldman

The Elder Scrolls I :Arena

Yeah....feeling old.... I did really like daggerfall. Some of those dungeons were beyond ridiculous! Also, sleeping in a store to rob it and sell the stuff back the next morning.

Shad0wfire99

The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim

Morrowind's terrible graphics make it pretty much unplayable nowadays. Oblivion is passable, but everyone needs to stop pretending that Morrowind is god's gift to video games.

mesmerizedish

Redguard, so I can't vote

riberion

The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion

My now husband got me into Oblivion, and I fell in love with the series. I still think Oblivion is the best TES game and have played thru multiple times.

Aliyavana

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Shad0wfire99 wrote: »

Morrowind's terrible graphics make it pretty much unplayable nowadays. Oblivion is passable, but everyone needs to stop pretending that Morrowind is god's gift to video games.

Blasphemous Fetcherous filthy argonian/argonian sympathyzer!

EleonoraCrendraven

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Morrowind. Played it multiple times. For months. And after Morrowind all the other TES Games. Enjoyed every minute

Iyas

I play the game because its a MMO with good pvp.

Couldnt care less about the ESO lore

Danikat

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Shad0wfire99 wrote: »

Morrowind's terrible graphics make it pretty much unplayable nowadays. Oblivion is passable, but everyone needs to stop pretending that Morrowind is god's gift to video games.

There's a lot more to any decent game than just the graphics.

What made Morrowind a good game was the gameplay and the world design. True open-world games were pretty rare back then (and most of the ones that did exist used a top-down view with 2D sprites drawn to look 3D). Combine that with the fact that it was a very detailed world, there was always stuff to find and do wherever you were - very few truly empty areas or irrelevant NPCs. It was especially unusual in that you were free to explore it right from the start of the game, you could do whatever you wanted, even ignore the main quest and focus entirely on side-quests. That also gave it a lot of replay value because the flexibility to put together your own story meant you could easily have multiple characters whose experience was totally different.

The elaborate lore and setting, and the mechanics added to that. Especially the character design which allowed you to combine any skills and attributes you wanted (not all builds would be equally viable of course, some of mine were terrible) but the point was you had that freedom to experiment which not many games offered. The combat was fairly unique as well, for an RPG, especially the way you had to move during combat to execute different attacks instead of it simply being an inherent ability or a skill you activated at will.

Of course none of that was completely unique to Morrowind, but it's the fact that it all came together in one game and actually worked that made it notable at the time and kept it interesting afterwards.

No it's not the single greatest game ever created. I have sometimes gotten the impression that some of the reverence for it is because it was so many people's first RPG so all the things which are unique to this genre like story-driven gameplay, exploration, customising your character etc. were totally new to them at the time. I get the impression some people actually think anything they hadn't encountered before was totally new and invented for Morrowind. But even for people who had played dozens of RPGs before and were familiar with most aspects of the game it was still pretty impressive and is still enjoyable, for lots of reasons besides the graphics.

Publius_Scipio

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Morrowind on Xbox

Skayaq

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

I was taken from the Imperial Prison, first by carriage then by boat, to the east, to Morrowind.

Adernath

The Elder Scrolls II : Daggerfall

I tried Arena the days back, but at that time I found other games more appealing.

But as Daggerfall came out I was driven into it. In fact, I ended up in a very large dungeon full of crazy items and portals. I got locked inside the dungeon behind several portals and never was able to get out of it since I had no portal scrolls anymore

AlienatedGoat

The Elder Scrolls II : Daggerfall

Daggerfall. I didn't like Arena. Daggerfall was amazing. The generated world was huge and was infinitely better than the other dungeon crawlers of the day. Even now, Daggerfall still has a large dedicated playerbase.

Dao_Jones

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Morrowind start for me. Loved that game.

I actually wrote a "character creation guide" for Morrowind on GameFaqs back in 2005 (currently has a "highest rated" tag ), and even 12 years later I still get an email about it once every few months.

Blows my mind that people are still coming to Morrowind for the first time, but it's also kinda awesome. One of the best games ever made, in my opinion, and still the best of the series in terms of purenjoyment and story.

kyle.wilson

The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion

Oblivion was my first Elder Scrolls game.
There were other games that drew my attention more, before Oblivion.
I played many of the D&D games, and some of the might and magic games before that.

BomblePants

The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim

Yeah Skyrim.... and no, I don't main a bow...

menedhyn

The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion

I got into Elder Scrolls quite late. The graphics of IV have inevitably aged, but I can live with that because the story, the lore, the depth and scale of the game content is, and always will be, far more appealing to me. I still play IV.

JamieAubrey

The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion

Ovlivion, my friend had this game back on the 360 and he would play it for hours while I watched in amazement ( I didn't have an Xbox at the time ) but when I did get one I got this game and IT RUINED MY LIFE

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN YOU ELDER SCROLLS SERIES

nimander99

The Elder Scrolls II : Daggerfall

Daggerfall but I never got very far when I first got it, it wasn't until Morrowind that I went back and beat Arena and Daggerfall.... Which I might add were not easy games to play.

Jitterbug

The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion

Yay I'm not the oldest person in this room!

Kram8ion

The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim

I was so excited for skyrim when it was released but it was a complete buggy mess and never finished it
Then eso came and the difference was staggering. I looked at the remastered skyrim and played demo at pax but after more than a year with eso it just felt like a step backwards

Eirikir

The Elder Scrolls I :Arena

And so my age is shown.

Balamoor

The Elder Scrolls I :Arena

Iyas wrote: »

I play the game because its a MMO with good pvp.

Couldnt care less about the ESO lore

In every thread like this some curmudgeon has to let the world know that PVP is the only thing that matters to them and any type of fluff or lore really means nothing.

It would be sad if it weren't so laughable.

Vizier

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Morrowind was revolutionary game play without handholding and a simply unmatched, never repeated, epic fantasy RPG.

Strider_Roshin

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

The only ES game where the Nord was OP lol. Immune to frost damage, and resistant against shock.

LordGavus

The Elder Scrolls III : Morrowind

Morrowind was the first one I played, though I didn't really get into the RPG thing until oblivion.

Tairgire

The Elder Scrolls II : Daggerfall

A looooong long time ago, I got my first tech support job (that was fully tech support and not just a retail job with some technical bits). It was for a game company in Rockville, MD. I played games as much as I could at the time (had a wimpy computer, self-built from hand-me-downs) but hadn't heard of theirs. Daggerfall had been released pretty recently. I didn't work there very long... a year or 18 months? Something like that. I've been playing the games pretty obsessively ever since (though I somehow managed to miss playing Redguard.)

akl77

The Elder Scrolls V : Skyrim

Skyrim on PS3

kendellking_chaosb14_ESO

The Elder Scrolls I :Arena

23 players so far from the start. Only a few of us know how far we have come.