The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind was one of the first Xbox titles I ever played, and I have many fond memories involving everything from playing the game to talking about it years later with friends. I wrote about it, I learned about it, I tooled about in the construction set, and I bought both expansions for it. When Bethesda began dropping clues for Oblivion’s official announcement, I predicted nearly completely the central storyline for the coming game based on clues only the most avid fans could gather and piece together from its predecessor. Yet I was not the game’s master; there were and still are many things I do not know about the world of Morrowind, because so much of it is a mystery by nature.

Beautifully scripted are the background stories for many of its organizations, but the intent is never to completely inform the player, but open up further questions. The Morag Tong, a guild of legally sanctioned assassins, split in half many years ago, resulting in an offshoot group, the Dark Brotherhood, after the latter clan’s killings became less reliant on legality and more on funding. The Dark Brotherhood, later a faction able to be joined in the sequel, Oblivion, is headed by the Night Mother. In Morrowind, the final question is left unsolved; who is she? What is she? The closer you get to information about the Morag Tong and Dark Brotherhood’s past together and subsequent falling out, the more wild the speculation becomes about the true explanation behind the present state of the guilds.

And so it was for the majority of the game. How did Nerevar really die? What actually happened that made the Dwarves disappear? Are the living gods really gods at all? Where did all these fucking cliff racers come from? The first time my cousin warned me about swimming too far, lest the Dreugh come after me, I thought he was making it up. There was no way this game was that crazy. A man with the lower body of an octopus and claws for hands? One moment it was unbelievable, and the next I was swimming for shore for all I was worth. Half the game is spent like that, uncovering new questions to answer, and the other half is spent rifling through the multitude of tomes in a personal quest to discern the truth behind the mysteries of Vvardenfell.

The game as a whole is so intricately foreign that it made for a better world to explore and experience than any I’ve ever seen since. The developers cited Egyptian, early Japanese, and Middle Eastern cultures as influence, and it really shows not just in all of the architecture, but the very civilization and all of its issues. The antagonist’s main goal is actually just to rule Morrowind, free of Imperial rule, as it was long ago. The process of stopping him involves interfering in regional politics, winning the hearts and minds of the most foreign groups, the nomadic tribesmen of Vvardenfell, and uniting the island under your leadership in the role of Nerevarine, hero reborn.

Arena, Daggerfall, and Oblivion all took place in the traditional RPG setting, with knights and green grass and dragons, and Morrowind is the place nobody from those other lands ever wants to visit. Its largest landmass is a volcanic island covered in ash, and its dark elf denizens hate foreign influence as much as the foreigners hate them. Where the dungeons of earlier Elder Scrolls titles were randomly generated, every hole in Morrowind was laid out according to carefully detailed plans. The intricacy of the world was more real than any other, and the depth only served to make Vvardenfell a more believable setting than Oblivion’s. If you want to know how deep the game actually went, here’s a good example: in Morrowind, there were over 300 books for the player to read, not including scrolls, letters, notes, and things of that nature. On standard sized paper, a collection of the books in this game spans over 1,200 pages. Damn.

The game starts small at the very tip of the iceberg - the shallow end of the pool - but from the very beginning, you’re free to wander absolutely anywhere with no guide whatsoever. Get involved in those regional politics, join one of the many guilds, gather wild ingredients and mix potions, explore dark caves, ruins and dungeons full of creatures beyond your wildest imagination, and get to know the people and problems of Morrowind. Before you realize it, you’re in a deeper world than any you’ve ever known. That complete freedom and depth is the true beauty of the game, and it’s largely due to fantastic design and more extensive in-game writing than I’ve ever come across. Once you’ve come to appreciate the world in Morrowind, you can return to that central storyline from so very long ago. You are free to ignore it, sure, but I found that the longer I spent away from it, the more I found motivation to return, knowing that my actions there would save the land I’d fallen in love with. That is actually the most fantastic thing about the game; there is nothing forcing you to defend the island of Vvardenfell except for your own conscience, and the wonderfully developed world away from that main quest only aids the development of your feelings toward it.

Many fantastic role-playing games have come out over the years, but Morrowind really helped pull itself head and shoulders above the crowd by developing a realistically complicated world in such an unfamiliar setting that its players can’t help but explore every nook and cranny, finding new reasons to love it every time they play. If you’ve never experienced the land of Vvardenfell, do yourself a favor and get with the times. Two weeks from now, I’ll be writing a follow-up piece on Oblivion, so come back on the Tuesday to read about that mainstream betrayal.