I remembered buying Morrowind back in 2002. I had that box in my hands, reading the back – NPCs remember you! They respond to your actions! Epic RPG! I was sold. Before this, I have never heard of Tamriel, Morrowind, or any other things related to Nirn. I played this strictly vanilla – no mods, and only buying the DLCs Tribunal and Bloodmoon when they were released. I had a whale of a time!
Now, back then I had a crappy toon. It was a mish-mash of builds. At first I wanted to be a kung-fu master, so I went with the custom class option. I specialised in un-armoured and un-armed combat. Mid-way through I realised I was getting beat up really hard, so I suddenly switched to Heavy Armour and started using a sword and shield. So my skills levelled up in those. Then even later on, I decided to ditch the heavy armour and weapons, and went with light armour and short blades (knives, shortswords etc).
In the end, my Nerevarrine is just a warrior with a bunch of ill-chosen skills. At the end of the game I remembered him being in a fully glassed armour outfit with a daedric sword and shield (yeah, I know right?).
So now, 17 years later, I’ve come back to revisit Seyda Neen – cuz Bethesda released a free GOTY version, and I realised I also had a GOG GotY version. I installed the GOG version instead cuz it came with more stuff.
Now, 17 years later, I’ve played Oblivion. I’ve played Skyrim. I’ve made mods for Skyrim and Oblivion. I understood how TES games worked “under the hood”.
This time around, I went to Nexus and obtained a few mods which I thought were essential – Unofficial Patches, patches that fixed gameplay issues that Bethesda didn’t fix (“Purist Patch”), and of course, modern HD Textures (with normal maps, or “to make things pop out”). No longer are bricks on the buildings just a painted-on texture… now bricks look like bricks! Well, unless you get closer, and you’ll see that it’s still a flat surface.
The first hours back in Seyda Neen was nostalgic – I remembered Fargoth, I remembered he had a hiding place. I did those quests, and headed off to Balmora. These, I remember. However, I am glad that whatever happened later, I’d forgotten. The game now feels like a “new game” to me cuz I barely remembered even 5% of the quests I had to do to slowly creep towards being the Nerevarrine. At this point my character doesn’t know he’s the Chosen One yet.
And Vivec – maaaan… it was bigger than I remembered. I barely even remembered the Arena. I doubt I had even taken part in fights in the Arena back in 2002, because I do not recall one single bit of the quests and of the Arena!
Solstheim
I also did a quick hop over to Solstheim cuz of a quest I got in Al’drun . The moment I arrived by ship, I had “reverse nostalgia”. Right up ahead was Fort Moonmoth, still intact and with guards patrolling! Now, it’s reverse-nostalgia because I was very intimate and familiar with Solstheim due to making my mod – Severin Manor Guard. So I kinda remembered where the landmarks were – where the Skals would be (had a Skal follower in the Skyrim Dragonborn expansion), where Thirsk Mead Hall would be etc. Thirsk actually looked kinda the same in Morrowind and in Skyrim – the only difference is the inhabitants.
I must say, Bethesda have really fleshed out Solstheim since 2002 – I went to where Raven Rock was supposed to be, and there was only 1 guy there that said this would be the site of a “new colony”. Luckily there were no dragons around (there’s a Word-Of-Power wall up at the northern part of Solstheim in Skyrim), and I ran all over the island trying to see what it looked like 4000 years before Skyrim (or was it 400 years?). I found Stahlrim and was unable to mine it cuz I didn’t have the Ancient Pickaxe (needed in Skyrim to mine it). Haven’t run across anything in Morrowind yet that would allow me to mine Stahlrim.
Back in Morrowind…
So after my quick jaunt into Solstheim (I still have to go back to complete some quests), I’m back in Morrowind, but at the Northern shores trying to uncover more of the map.
I must say, I expect to be caught up in this re-play for about 100 hours or more, simply because I’ve forgotten so much of it and remembering only key important highlights of the game, and also the mods really updated the game to be somewhat decent by today’s standard.
