The Quill #2: Video Games #4

I remember my first time playing an Elder Scrolls game. I was trying different games on the Xbox, something that, when I was around seven years old, was an endlessly exciting experience to me. Every new game put me in a different universe, in a manner of speaking. I would play maybe 10 minutes of one game before rummaging through my father’s collection for yet another. But then I got bored, and as I went through the hundred games I had already tried, the words on one caught my eye: Morrowind. In hindsight, the dragon behind the words drew my attention the most, I think, but I booted it up all the same.

From the second I stepped foot off the prison ship to the fishing village of Seyda Neen, the “tutorial” area of the game, I felt I was somewhere truly new. Clear water moved below me, and in the distance, a massive bug sat docile against a hill. After fumbling my way through the first interactions (of course, choosing whatever options sounded the coolest), I was set onto a world that I never would’ve seen otherwise. I was promptly killed by a rat.

This whole experience shaped my future as a gamer. I’ve played Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind extensively throughout the years, and somewhere along the lines, I figured out how to beat that rat. Since then, though, only a few times have I gotten the giddiness while starting a game that I felt when I awoke in the hold of that prison ship. At risk of sounding like a has-been, I’m not sure anything will ever strike me the same way as that moment.

That experience of a world you could never go to is what makes video games so culturally important as a form of expression. Poring over every scroll in the bookstore, comparing opposing historical accounts of events that never happened, I think I found my inquisitive mind in Morrowind. I am forever grateful, no matter where gaming goes from here, for that experience.

Available on Xbox One and Steam.