Even though the graphics are impressive by 2002 standards – particularly the implementation of weather effects and the day-night cycle – the animations feel stiff and floaty. Morrowind’s skill systems are far from perfect, of course. And your avatar, sufficiently leveled up, struggles to stand out amidst a crowd of similar jacks of all trades. When your character can be a master of any skill, there is little incentive to role-play a particular approach or style. Looking back, however, it cheapened the role-playing fantasy. Oblivion shed the misc skills category, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim removed these distinctions altogether. Major skills increase the quickest and make the most significant contribution to overall leveling up, while misc skills make no contribution to leveling up at all. Here you pick your class or create a custom class, which determines your major, minor, and miscellaneous (“misc”) skills. The ship docks at the port of Seyda Neen, and your release paperwork acts as a character creator. The introduction is unassuming enough: You wake up a prisoner on a ship headed for Vvardenfell, an island in Morrowind, itself a province of Tamriel – the continent where every Elder Scrolls game has taken place. Indeed, in many ways Morrowind marked the high point of Bethesda’s experimentation, if not a more general pinnacle for the industry’s willingness to experiment with large, expensive, open-world undertakings.
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So much more, in fact, that, with the possible exception of Shivering Isles – the masterful DLC for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Bethesda hasn’t been able to make anything as deep, strange, or immersive since. That memory might seem apt, given that The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was quite the trip when it released 20 years ago, but there was a lot more to Bethesda’s open world than psychedelic plants. These days most people remember the giant mushrooms.