The Life and Times of an Elder Scrolls Addict: Part I

To kick off my month long coverage up to the release of Skyrim, I will be doing several different articles ranging from my personal history with the series all the way to my favorite mods for Morrowind and Oblivion and lots of other fun stuff so check back each afternoon for more!

In The Beginning

It all started one hot and sticky August afternoon which happened to be my birthday, as I opened my gifts one of them caught my eye. It was an Xbox game, it had this odd cover artwork which looked like some kind of tribal art printed on animal hide, it was named The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. I asked my dad.

“What’s This?”

To which he replied.

“I don’t know, the guy at the store said it was this awesome RPG game, I thought you might like it.”

I looked at it quizzically for awhile and then sat it down and forgot about it. Roughly four months later I’m looking through my extensive Xbox game collection for something to play, when this game Morrowind crosses my path again. I hesitated for a minute and then decided to put the disc into the console. With the deep rumble of the drums and soft melody of flutes I knew from that moment on my life would never be the same again.

In reality the first time I played the game I was 100% lost, I started running around after making my character, I ended up eventually in Pelagiad where I got my first taste of some of the gorgeous scenery. From there I made my way down the road and found a traveling tradesman who was looking for a budding adventurer to take him to Vivec, now I had no idea where Vivec was but I wasn’t going to pass up some free coins so I agreed. Three hours later we finally made it to Vivec, I felt an immense amount of accomplishment from completing such a miniscule task. A few minutes later I had to go to bed and would again forget about this game for awhile but fear not, for this is a happy tale.

Roughly a week later I remembered that I had Morrowind in my Xbox and decided to give it another go. This time I actually put some effort into creating my character and talking to the NPC’s in the game to get a feel for what I was suppose to be doing. Next thing you know I am killing rats and taking names. The main quest started off slow enough but once I got through the first few boring quests I was totally hooked, I dumped more hours than I care to admit into my initial playthrough. Next thing I knew I had a house built for me by the Hlaalu for being completely awesome. My house was full from top to bottom of Daedric, Ebony, and Glass weapons and gear. I had far more than I would ever need but it didn’t matter, I liked to collect every piece of loot that dropped. Eventually I did finish up the main story and a huge chunk of the side quests. But then the unimaginable happened.