i will go to war for this game. im serious. is the story interesting? hell no! is the moment to moment gameplay any good at all? hell no! is it constantly sluggish? hell yes! is it simultaneously too shallow for baldurs gate fans and too deep for dragon age fans? kind of, yeah! but i love it anyway. morrowind is just so g damn charming. its a jack of all trades experience, prioritizing giving you decent freedom in how you interact with the world rather than fleshing out any specific element. but while skyrim gets lost in the sauce of its shallowness, morrowind greets you with a brace faced smile and starts showing you its rock collection, and its hotwheels cars, and its dollhouse, and its gamecube. you get it. i think the difference is that 1. morrowinds weird alien marshland is still the most interesting fantasy world ive seen this side of a controller, and 2. morrowind just feels a lot more committed to itself than skyrim ever did. skyrim wanted to be everything at once, morrowind just wants to show you its big new world and how many books it wrote about itself. the dialogue is fun in a utiliterian way, pointing you places (that it trusts you to find yourself!) and telling you things that youve probably heard 20 times before. but you wanna hear it anyway dont ya. its the kind of character centric dialogue and fate based main questline that should make you feel like a self absorbed jerk a la skyrim, but it doesnt. probably because it takes you 14 swings of your chitin spear to kill a cliff racer because you were running here even though it completely depletes your stamina bar but you had to because the walking is just SO GOD DAMN SLOW and oh my fucking god ultima underworld feels better than this please god why. sicko freakout aside, morrowind is a pretty good rpg, and a great 2004 tech demo/walking sim that takes you around one of the most charming game worlds ever made. and vivec is STILL the coolest video game city. try it out wontcha?