THE ELDER SCROLLS III: MORROWIND

Vvardenfalling in love again.

- By Matt Elliott

It's strange experiencing a sense of urgency in a game I've played for hundreds of hours. But that's what happens when I begin a new adventure in Morrowind: a Pavlovian response that makes me want to charge out of the character creation section and start exploring, even though I know I've seen it all before.

Before I can even get to that, however, are the waves of nostalgia. Hearing the creak of timber ships and the reassuring calm of Azura's voice rockets me back to 2002, and the overwhelming promise of freedom, the likes of which, back then, I'd never experienced. Watching the intro reminds me of the stories sparked from my previous experiences: vampire knights, noble savages, reluctant messiahs, hired killers. It's abandoned shacks full of books, sunrises at the foot of statues.

I'm getting ahead—or perhaps behind—myself. I'm not even off the ship yet. The guard arrives and all I can think about is rushing past him so he doesn't slow me down as I sprint to freedom: a maneuver I've repeated hundreds of times to speed up the intro. In the best possible way, the opening 30 minutes is pure muscle memory. I make my character, steal everything I can from the first room so I can sell it, collect Fargoth's ring, return it to him to improve my reputation with his friend, Arrille. Even this small act reminds me why the game is so special: I'm five minutes in and I have a contact in the first area, whose backstory I know, and a preferred vendor, from whom I'll get better prices. This specificity is what makes the game sing. On the one hand, Arrille is just another High Elf trader with the exact same face and voice as a hundred other NPCs; on the other, he's the person who sold me my first sword, and a character who means more to me than most of the cast of Skyrim. I wonder if the people and places in