Happy 25th Birthday Elder Scrolls! Which Game Got You Started?

Sygil05

Daggerfall

Daggerfall blew my 12 year old mind, and got me hooked on this series.

Cundu_Ertur

Morrowind

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob-CdGmpg_U

Go on. Click "New." Y'know ya wanna.

Bekkael

Morrowind

I played Morrowind on the original Xbox and loved it. When Oblivion released, I bought an Xbox360 just to play it. I remember standing still with my character and just watching the grass sway and marveling at the beauty of the night sky.

Once, when I tried to use a charm spell before buying from a Leyawiin merchant, I actually messed up and hit him with the “Enemies Explode” spell instead. 😂 His exclamation of “By the gooooodddddsss!” became a priceless family meme, still quoted by my kids to this day.

Good memories, and wonderful games. 😁 Happy birthday, TES series, I’ve loved you for many years.

Sylvermynx

Arena

Played each game in turn beginning with Arena. Bought them all as they were released, played them for years until the next one landed....

SilverIce58

Skyrim

I started with Skyrim a few months after it came out, and didnt know there were others (despite it being called the elder scrolls 5) for a while. Next was Oblivion, then Morrowind, and I've played daggerfall and arena, but only the tutorial dungeons.

The lore is my absolute favorite thing about the games. And this series is definitely in my top 3 favorite games series.

H3rBie

Oblivion

Elder Scrolls addicted since Oblivion

Ilsabet

Skyrim

I played Skyrim fairly obsessively during the summer of 2015, after being vaguely aware of it for years (largely thanks to the arrow in the knee meme) and getting it on sale for like five bucks on Steam. I spent most of my time derping around exploring and doing side quests, and by the time I was like "oh hey I should go deal with that dragon thing" I was like level 87 and the final fight was really not challenging. I never did choose a side in the civil war, and although I know which side my Dragonborn would pick, I'm not enough of a completionist to go back and actually finish the story. Largely because I wandered over to ESO and now I'm all up in that and I'm pretty sure I'd be confused with the controls that are slightly different in Skyrim.

Also a PSA - For anyone who hasn't gotten Morrowind, Bethesda is offering it for free today:

https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/tes25

emilyhyoyeon

Oblivion

and Oblivion is still my favorite but I love them all

VDoom1

Oblivion

Oblivion, a looooooong time ago now. Would be awesome to play Oblivion with the graphics we have today.

Happy Birthday Elder Scrolls!

ghastley

Oblivion

I came to TES from Dungeon Siege, because I like to create mods. DS1 and DSII were done by Gas Powered Games, who provided an SDK to encourage mods, both new maps and new content. Then it sold off, and DS III was a no-mods disaster, so I looked for another mod-friendly game. Oblivion was the current TES game, so I started there.

From Oblivion, I went to Daggerfall, because Skyrim required Steam, and Morrowind was hard to find. Then they brought out the anthology and I started playing (and making mods for) all of them. I never found the tools to make Arena mods, but my main character in Daggerfall was an Orc. I have about 30 mods on the Nexus for the series.

Some time soon, I must make an ESO add-on.

efster

Arena

Arena. My most vivid memories of it involve getting my low-level behind handed to me by goblins outside the tavern in the dark. That happened A LOT because I started a lot of playthroughs (but only finished 3 I think). Daggerfall had the biggest world, Morrowind was my favourite to sandbox in (I MISS flying high above Vivec City) and decorate a house, I loved Oblivion for the hilarious NPC interactions ("How are you?" "Go away!") and Strong Mudcrabs, and Skyrim was my favourite for micro-level exploration (like when you stumble across a house on fire in the wilderness and can puzzle out what happened by exploring round the area without being on a quest, just because you want to).

ESO is my favourite of them all so far, though, and not even for the MMO aspect. I feel like it just takes everything that worked well in the previous games and rolls it into one.

Except Strong Mudcrabs. I miss those guys.

RDMyers65b14_ESO

Oblivion

I had wanted to play Arena, but the ex-husband said that it would NOT be allowed on the computer.

Then, after the divorce and several years, my younger son called me to come watch the new game that he was playing. The moment I heard Sir Patrick Stewart's voice, I was hooked.

Now, I need need to log in my character that turns 5 on this upcoming Sunday. 6:30 AM on prerelease day.

Sapphire_Lily

Oblivion

"You are like a Dark Gift from the Night Mother herself."

Thank you Vicente for encapsulating how I felt about oblivion when I made the arduous maiden voyage through the sewers and became confounded by the class system for over 25 minutes as I ruminated upon each prospective class! Happy birthday ES! I vividly remember being perturbed by Uriel Septim's assassination and the vast deterioration of my character's morality when one Mr Lachance told me I sleep too soundly.

Robo_Hobo

Oblivion

My first experience of Elder Scrolls was going over to a friend's house one day, and they let me play some of their games on the Xbox360 while I was there.

I started up Oblivion because it sounded interesting, and made a Khajiit, and wreaked havoc on the Imperial City, and managed to break into the inner chambers of the Imperial City Palace (probably after a lot of reloading), and managed to pickpocket Ocato's staff, (also probably after a lot of reloading). I can't remember much else from that session but I do remember asking to borrow the game for awhile to play it more at home.

Suffice to say, many hundreds of hours were spent playing Oblivion after that, and I can't remember if I ever did get around to giving my friend the game back lol.

Years later I started and played a ton of Skyrim, then ESO since release, then to TES3 Morrowind, some TES Legends, and now recently I've been starting to play Arena, with intentions to play through Daggerfall afterwards. Arena, especially, took some getting used to, but I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot so far. Funnily, I still haven't done the Fang Lair dungeon in ESO yet, but I just now got to it in Arena first.

Cundu_Ertur

Morrowind

Sapphire_Lily wrote: »

"You are like a Dark Gift from the Night Mother herself."

Thank you Vicente for encapsulating how I felt about oblivion when I made the arduous maiden voyage through the sewers and became confounded by the class system for over 25 minutes as I ruminated upon each prospective class!

I did that in Morrowind. Then 30 hours in I started a new guy with my own custom class because of how levelling worked. For anyone who wants to get and play the pre-skyrim games; in Morrowind and Oblivion you make a custom class with one easy to control skill from each attribute that you won't use on a regular basis. Then you have to track how many levels you get in the non-class skills until you have enough for 5 attribute points in the two attributes you want to raise, then level up your class skills. That way you get +5 in two attributes (=1 luck) every level instead of maybe +2 +3. This is especially important in Oblivion due to how scaling works. Also, always level luck. It matters over time. Also, in Oblivion save most of the gates until you get the max level sigil stones. You can also save before you take the sigil stone to get an enchant you want, iirc.

Cundu_Ertur

Morrowind

Ilsabet wrote: »

Also a PSA - For anyone who hasn't gotten Morrowind, Bethesda is offering it for free today:

https://elderscrolls.bethesda.net/en/tes25

TODAY ONLY! Get it while it's hot! You, too, can be told to 'move along, scum,' by surly Ordinators! You can try to improve their attitude by wearing their armor. (Save first, though. And save often.)

Ohtimbar

Daggerfall

Blah, clicked the wrong thing. Started with Arena. Passwall rocks. I did't fall in love with the series until Daggerfall though. Morrowind was the final clincher.

Ye_Olde_Crowe

Arena

Ohtimbar wrote: »

Passwall FTW

There was a Passwall spell in Daggerfall? I thought that era ended with Arena...
Anyway, Daggerfall had [ and ] to cycle through dungeon locations which was nearly as useful as Passwall. Unless you ported straight into an enemy. In that case it was less useful.

Ohtimbar

Daggerfall

Ye_Olde_Crowe wrote: »

Ohtimbar wrote: »

Passwall FTW

There was a Passwall spell in Daggerfall? I thought that era ended with Arena...
Anyway, Daggerfall had [ and ] to cycle through dungeon locations which was nearly as useful as Passwall. Unless you ported straight into an enemy. In that case it was less useful.

No, Daggerfall lacked Passwall sadly. I think there might have been a mod that added it back, but I haven't played either game in many years.

Mintaka5

Skyrim

Heard about it from friends, and the way they described it sounded amazing.

Aliyavana

Morrowind

Nice to see the diversity of people on what gane they started on

leeux

Oblivion

I played Morrowind first, around ~2004-2005... but I didn't got into it in my original playthrough, I think I reached Balmora and stopped playing there.

But I picked up Oblivion in around the end of 2006 and got into the series with it.... then revisited Morrowind again, around ~2009-2010 and finished it.

So, I'd consider Oblivion to be the game that got me into the series... and mostly, its mods... if it weren't for its mods, I wouldn't probably have kept playing it past 2007... even up today, where I have 4 side by side installs with different mods installed 1 vanilla base install, 1 super duper modded install, 1 Nehrim install and the separated "Steam" install that I use for modding and stuff.

In comparison, I have 2 Morrowind installs, a base vanilla for testing mods and another full MSGO + mods install for playing.

I played Skyrim for several months after launch in 2011, and I still have it installed, but I wouldn't consider it on par with the other two... due to mostly aesthetic and gameplay reasons.

Ozzymandius

Arena

Arena was the first game I played - was hooked from then on. Completed them all. Long may the series continue alongside eso :-) Most enjoyable aspect to me is the lore and the stories that enfold as you do the quests. Also a great fan of the exploration and crafting aspects. Thanks to all the developers for many wonderful years of gaming.

Path

Morrowind

Morrowind!
First open world game I played. "You mean I can go anywhere?" "No point and click?" I was stunned.
Loved stealing. Loved the NPC reactions to my debauchery.
Amazing game.

Anhedonie

Daggerfall

And btw, I fkn hated Morrowind.

Aliyavana

Morrowind

Anhedonie wrote: »

And btw, I fkn hated Morrowind.

"What a grand and intoxicating innocence!" - Dagoth Ur

starkerealm

Morrowind

I remember seeing Arena and Daggerfall on shelves, but I wasn't into RPGs back then. I got lured over by Deus Ex and Fallout, then Morrowind caught my eye by being a strange mix of conventional fantasy and toad licking weirdness.

tspecherb14_ESO

Arena

Arena

SydneyGrey

Morrowind

Started with the original Morrowind.
Played every Elder Scrolls game since then, and loved every single one. I also ended up playing the Fallout games just because I became a Bethesda fan.

technohic

Eso

I played some Skyrim but never got into it. It really is the PvP here and I probably dont give many *** otherwise.