The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition

This is the best game of the Elder Scrolls series, period. You won't find fast travel here and the crappy journal system found in Skyrim; instead, the journal is chronological and offers a lot of context. Something which Skyrim does not, so even if a lot of quests are bland and repetitive, you will always know who gave them to you and whether you're helping the bad guys or the good ones, which more than makes up for it. The way this is implemented in Morrowind is somewhat basic, sure, but for a game made in 2002, this is more than acceptable; Skyrim utterly fails in this regard. The game itself is addictive and its buying and selling minigame (if you can call it that) hugely contributes to this. The items you find in the game offer a lot more variety as well as personality and you will always know if the item you've found is a legendary artifact or just an average weapon. Skyrim lacks that feeling of epicness. It's also been said the game is quite difficult and does not really take you by the hand...well, that's not really true: first, you can adjust the difficulty level whenever you want, and second, if you adequately prepare for a mission in the early stages of the game and bring a lot of restore health potions with you, which you can drink while the game is paused, you usually won't have any trouble at all. The game does have a couple of almost critical bugs, but if you tread with caution, and don't kill anyone from one of the great nomadic tribes, and don't save the pilgrim found near Ald Velothi before the quest is assigned to you by the Legion, you'll be fine; and I recommend you travel around there only after joining the Legion anyway. Also, while traveling near Ald Velothi, get the Amulet of Shadows ("a lady in distress") and never sell it to anybody. It will make you a master thief, and will spare you a few bounties as well as help you complete the Gnisis Imperial Legion questline without getting kicked out. And remember: Skyrim sucks utter balls!

There's not really much to say about this game except that it's a masterpiece. It starts out a bit slow, but the payoff is great. The role-playing possibilities are practically limitless, the world is full of wonders and the lore is both deep and fun to read about.

oblivion 100hrs, Skyrim 100hrs, Morrowind 1200 hrs. I only ever completed the main quest lines once, the reason, I kept being diverted by the vast array of things to do, places to see, skills to level, ruins to delve into. Even with its gameplay flaws, this game shines like no other!

But do install the updated graphics and etc., The game starts slowly, but is easily as rivetting as Skyrim, and far better than fetch quest Oblivion.

I play A LOT of RPGs and have been gaming since 1980. Morrowind is one of the best games ever made, and in many ways it is superior to Oblivion and Skyrim. Unfortunately, Bethesda has traded great story telling and gameplay for handicapped and gutted games designed to cater to casuals and those who cannot figure out how to play an RPG. Thankfully, Morrowind has a vast community of modders, progammers, and hackers who keep this game alive. You have the MWSE option which opens up so many mods that it is unreal. Openmw, while having LUA support, is not quite there yet as far as LUA capabilities go, but it runs Morrowind very well. I personally do not use OpenMW at this time, but I probably will when the modding scene catches up to the vanilla engine. The time you can put into Morrowind is endless. The vast main quest and many side quests, the hundreds if not thousands of mods which add quests, new areas, new characters and stories, and even entire continents - with many of these mods surpassing the quality of Bethesda's original work. It is entirely possible to recreate Skyrim in Morrowind, just with dated visuals and with old school gameplay (though there are mods which add modern gameplayu mechanics and better graphics.) You can create entirely new games with the Construction set.You can use mods with higher-poly models and 4k textures (I use them, but when doing a vanilla+ playthrough, I stick with vanilla textures and heads.) I would recommend Morrowind to any RPG fan and fans of mods. I never completed Skyrim, because I keep playing Morrowind.