Morrowind

About two years ago (long ago, in pre-Stick history), I was at Eric’s, lying on the couch and studying. With characteristic focus on my homework, I looked over Eric’s shoulder and saw Morrowind.

“Oooo, that looks pretty. And you have lots of stuff in your bag! Can I play?”

“I told you about it when I first got it, and you said it looked like a bloody game and you don’t like violent games and you wouldn’t even let me make you a character,” Eric reminded me.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “Well, you were slashing somebody up then.”

“Oh yeah,” (This conversation explains why Eric and I don’t argue)

I like really open-ended games. If a quest has more than one ending, I’m happy. If almost every quest has different endings, which unlock even more quests… I’m in gamer girl heaven. Morrowind is the most open-ended game I’ve ever played. You can pick a detailed combination of racial traits, birthsign, talents and skills, or if that’s still not enough customization, you can invent your own character class. (And the preset classes include Witchhunter, Nightblade and Spellsword, instead of just Fighter, Mage and Rogue) If you decide, after hours of gameplay and several levels, that you’re not so crazy about your skills and you want to become something else, it’s possible to work on those other skills. Nothing’s forbidden.

The Morrowind world is well-written, too. You find (or in my case, steal) bottles of flin and mazte, instead of Potion of +50 HP. When you find (or steal) books, you can read about the history and myths of Morrowind. If anyone from Bethesda is reading this, and needs someone to write fictional myths for a computer game, I’m your girl!
Celtic and Persian-inspired clothes, NPCs with Roman-style names and an incredible variety of architecture keep Morrowind from becoming pseudo-medieval generic fantasy.

If you ever run out of things to do in the game, say there’s a blizzard and you can’t leave the house for weeks on end, you can download new mods for Morrowind. My personal favorite is the boyfriend mod. (Hey, this was before Stick, ok?) He’s programmed to say sweet things, and you can sleep at his place without the assassin mod coming for you. You can also leave some of your loot at his place.

And I really like games with stuff. Sure, I like leveling too, but I’d much rather have a sexy new set of armor and a better sword. (New cleavage-baring robes for the magic-users don’t hurt, either) Morrowind gives you different styles of clothes, armor, weapons… and modders have built a complete wardrobe, plus weapons and all kinds of trendy Pottery Barn accessories for your house.

The mapping system is not so good… or maybe my sense of direction is not so good. Quite a lot of my Morrowinding time involved me shouting “Eric! I’m lost again!” into the kitchen. I was playing it at Eric and Chris’ place because Morrowind requires a better videocard than I had at the time.

I liked Morrowind so much that finally got my finances into a spot where I could buy a new videocard and Eric and I went to Best Buy to get one. (this was pre-Squeaky, too) I was supposed to go see a movie with a boy I’d just met and kinda liked but I was so excited to play Morrowind that I kind of blew him off.

Unfortunately for me, that boy was Stick.