The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind GOTY Edition

This game is god tier from it's writting to it's world design and so much more. This game truly represents a time when Bethesda actually cared about the product they were creating and not just how much money said product will make. I can't reccomend this game enough and IMO Morrowind is the ultimate Elder Scrolls experience as frankly Skyrim can't even remotely compare. The saying "They don't make em like they used to." is 100% the case here. I mean Caius Cosades' amazing abs alone is enough to make this game a 10/10, haha seriously though this game is great and a lot of modern titles are pathetic excuses in comparison BC nowadays devs lack the passion they once had and games like this show that fleeting passion in spades. Skyrim is okay, Oblivion is good but Morrowind is a masterpiece! For the kiddos out there, please look past the graphics and admittedly dated combat BC the full experience is unlike anything Bethesda has created since and unfortunately I doubt we will ever see anything like it ever again.

The game shows its age, just like every other 3D game from the time, there's no way around that. As usual from Bethesda since Arena, Morrowind has bugs on top of bugs on top of glitches on top of exploits. OpenMW fixes a number of bugs and also lets you play on current OSes, including Linux distros, so you should DEFINITELY use it. While it's not yet a 1.0 release, it's been stable enough to experience the whole game since v0.37 or so. Morrowind also has a dice roll for its real time combat, which is an incredible turn off if you're used to pretty much any other game with real time combat: you click, you see the sword slashing, you see a message saying "you missed" or "enemy dodges". That is a strong "quit and uninstall" moment and one that almost led me to uninstall the game back when I first played it in 2006. Then I found out about mods, and boy did I mod the game a lot! Back then, the main source for these was Fileplanet. Nowadays, besides the Nexus, you should definitely check MW Modding History. If you can get past the dated graphics and animation and grit your teeth through dice rolling combat, OR mod those things into something decent, you'll find an amazing game that's full of stories that "we're not entirely sure if this is true", NPCs that have their own agendas and don't much care about who you are until you make a name for yourself. You can also simply go ahead and kill everybody. Yup, you can literally kill every single NPC in the game. You will be warned if an important one dies, that you messed up the thread of fate. But that thread is only the main quest as the devs intended it, you can still beat the final boss,

There are a lot of MMORPG games out there struggling to be as good as this single player gem. The character customisation is brilliant, you can simply make a character exactly how you want: want to be good at everything, np. The game world is huge and fun to explore, no matter how many dungeons you find you will want more. The gear crafting and spell crafting are easy to use, the alchemy might take a little while to get used to but the pots you can make can be awesome. Yet all this runs seamlessly on the PC with keyboard and mouse. Unlike Skyrim it wasn't built around a game controller giving what I feel is a better experience. If you started Elder Scrolls with Oblivion or Skyrim imagine them with a lot, lot bigger world and a lot more character depth and skills. As for the story, I finished it a few times when the game came out, it is interesting the first few time, but after that a new game is just a mad run into the wilds exploring and slaying. Play the great houses against each other, join the guilds, own a home, pick up as many quests as you want (or don't want) and/or just kill everything. In short if you're looking for a better version of Oblivion, Skyrim or even ESO this is it, just the amount of starting skills and vatness of the wilds blows the first two away and the fact you can have whatever combination of skills you want makes it better than its MMO big brother. (Biggest downfall of ESO for me is the rigid class/skill choices). Along with BG/BG2 this game is a must for any serious fantasy RPG gamer.

GOG does it again, giving us all what we want AND including that are just great to have, unlike other platforms.

The best entry in the Elder Scrolls series. Make sure you will look up how to build a character for beginners. I keep coming back to this game due to the excellent modding community. Land expansions like Tamriel Rebuilt and Skyrim Home of The Nords are highly recommended. OpenMW is an open source engine that comes along with gamepad, modern resolution support and better stability.