If Skyrim had an alternate title, a natural choice would be “Dragonborn”. The narrative surrounds the return of the destined hero, who follows in the footsteps of a mythical figure at the center of a religious conflict. Oblivion’s alternate title would be similar, with something like “Hero of Kvatch”. The quests focus less on the destiny of the hero and more on their heroic role in a variety of events. What I consider to be beautiful about Morrowind is that there isn’t a title that works nearly as well. Morrowind’s story is actually about Morrowind. Progressing through the main story slowly unravels the history of the land, the values of its people, and the goals of the organizations they created. I don’t want to give any spoilers past that, because I consider it to be the gold standard of story presentation in an open-world RPG. The only caveat is how dated every other element feels. The movement is incredibly slow, which makes the sparse map features feel even more spread out. Even in the later games the combat is lackluster, so the primitive implementation here feels especially stiff. It took me three or four tries to get past how dated some of the elements of this game are, but I’m glad I was eventually able to push through. If you’ve bounced off this game in the past, I recommend doing yourself a favor and trying again, even if that means installing a couple mods to smooth things out. Get the interface and movespeed just how you like it so you can appreciate a classic.