"Go play Game X, because it's a precursor to Game Y, which you really love."

Eh.

Mass Effect 2 and Skyrim might be the two games into which I've sunk the most time (an accomplishment, given that I've only owned Skyrim for less than a year). I also own Knights of the Old Republic and Morrowind. And do I feel the same way about those games?

Uh, no.

SACRILEGE! HERETIC! BLASPHEMER!

Yeah, okay, okay. It's not the graphics (although good grief, Morrowind's draw distance is godawful). I'll gently knock their soundtracks for being "of their time" in the sense that there's no rhyme or reason behind why they transition from one piece to the next - but having said that, they're both great, and I was under the impression that I owed Jeremy Soule an apology for saying that the Skyrim theme ripped off the Pirates of the Caribbean theme when in fact Soule's theme debuted in Morrowind, one year before the first Pirates film, but I can't actually find the post on this blog where I said that.

Rah rah worldbuilding and storyline and all that - yeah, okay, but the thing is, these things aren't storybooks (something that BioWare seemed to understand for the first two Mass Effect games and then forgot again for the third one).  Player interaction is kinda what makes video games, you know, video games. And I don't care how well-constructed your little fantasy world is if interacting with it is a major hassle.

I'm not even complaining about Morrowind's lack of quest markers here, because I thought they held your hand in Skyrim and I didn't really miss them. (Also, Morrowind still gives you a compass, without which you'd be totally f*cked.) But if anyone can tell me how to read a book in Morrowind without first taking it out of my inventory and dropping it on the ground, I'd appreciate it.

I'll also complain that my health and magicka don't regenerate. The hell is this, survival horror?

Now, I admit that my Morrowind experience was a bit tainted by the fact that my very first character (and the custom class I created for him) are gone forever because I died in the first dungeon I found and didn't realize that the game doesn't autosave as often as Skyrim does. That was a bit obnoxious. But I will say that my first hour of Skyrim was much more enjoyable than my first hour of Morrowind, even aside from that.