Greetings, ‘sheeple’- to celebrate the day, it’s already been 23 years since The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was released. If you haven’t partaken in some dubious mushroom usage, shouting “N’wah” at total strangers on such a day, are you even a real gamer?? Bethesda just celebrated its anniversary love on Twitter with a retro poster and sparked all kind of nostalgia for fans to get amped about it.
Morrowind is not a game; it reset culture before anyone knew what that was. It’s been around since 2002 (when flip phones became part of high-tech culture), and it has totally changed the way RPGs are played by bending the concept of beautiful alien landscapes, lore deeper than your strange uncle’s conspiracy theories, and the sweetest game-breaking alchemy exploits liberty.
Your first real experience of being thrown in the air by one Cliff Racer? Or getting lost in Vivec because all those identical cantons really mess with one’s sense of direction within 40 minutes? Those are classic Morrowind moments that no graphics, no matter how beautiful, in Skyrim are going to replace.
It threw a player right into an area where he had to read dialogues-it was thrown more like randomized-clearly no hand holding here-and had to be very careful figuring out exactly why everyone hated him in that world for being the Nerevarine.
Almost canceled, Todd Howard himself admitted, because development got messy. They had to cut about half the content-this is where your random unfinished castle is just vibing in the middle of nowhere. But it, somehow, worked those janky magic with over 4 million copies sold out and saved Bethesda from drowning.
This modding community was doing crazy projects for years: from Skywind-building its recreation in Skyrim’s engine-to Tamriel Rebuilt-adding all those cut contents. There are people still speedrunning it-right now, any% record is under 3 minutes, which is just… how??
These were Boots of Blinding Speed, sujamma chugging and raising a glass to that game’s magic, which proved beyond the fact that RPGs really could be the funniest in the world and still slap even harder than high-level Ordinators. Happy birthday Morrowind-you beautiful, weird, and unbalanced masterpiece.
