Your First Elder Scrolls Experience, Please tell Options

[Zelda_Zealot]

My first was with Morrowind, I was over at a friend's house (THANK YOU ANTHONY!) when he showed me Morrowind. So after watching him go around killing everything in sight for a while I asked if I could play, "Yeah in a sec" was his responce.

TWO HOURS LATER

Finally he gets of his PC and lets me try, so clicking new game I insert my fav. name at the time (Plus I got it from a book set it in medival times) and enter the world of Tamriel for the first time.

So after being comepletely blown away I set out to explore Seyda Neen. Now while Anthony was more of the kill first think about the guards later type, I played slightly more intelligently.

Being a thief I entered Arrills Tradeshop and did the first thing a thief would do (Being a stupid one I mean), took the silver shortsword, needless to say Anthony thought I was going on a mass killing spree and advised to to kill the Altmer shouting at me.

Now I normally won't give in to his advise, but I had no idea as to what I should do, thus I drew my sword (After equiping it I mean, sorry but that sounded cool.) and failed in my attempt to slay the High Elf. That was my first and second lesson in the Elder Scrolls, level one thief's don't commenly win against anything, and never listen to Anthony.

So tell us yours, or I will send Anthony to you house...

P.S. I meant to add this in above, but that was also just before my 15th B-D so with my B-D money I bought Morrowind for X-Box.

[Bolzmania]

My sisters friend had the game and my sister borrowed it from her. Well, everybody just loved the game. I did only kill people but now I' doing more stuff.


//Daedroth

[raggidman]

psst - I started with Daggerfall - soo loooong agoooo - I can't even rremember the year.

One moment I was playing stuff like Wing Commander and fighting off the Cats, and the next I was in this weird dugeon - andI was the Cat person!

It was the spookiest dungeon I have ever been in! That music! And all those strange creatures that seemed somehow to fit, as creatures seldom have done in other games.

It took me ages to fing my way out of that dungeon - or so it seemed at the time. An dI had begun to wonder if the whole game was set in it. Then all of a sudden - pow - I was out in th estarlight, and then it started snowing! And the music - totally different - real travelling music! true

[marstinson]

Daggerfall! Saw it at Computer City right after its release in 1996. I had just upgraded to Win95 on a Pentium processor at something like 100 or 120MHz with an amazing 32MB of RAM (really hot stuff after futzing around on a 386SX at something like 8 or 12MHz). Never read a review; the on-box description just blew me away and I had to get it. Took it home, loaded it up, nearly messed my drawers when the skeleton came charging down the stairs in Privateers Hold and immediately fell in love with it. Thousands of hours of playing time and an entire website written in Notepad with graphics courtesty of Paint (Beginners Guide to Daggerfall). Bugs out the wahzoo (something like 6 or 7 patches before Bethesda finally gave up on it), but we found work-arounds and loved every minute of it. Hard to believe, but the Huge install ate up a fourth of my hard drive (FAT16 partition could only go 2 gigs). Somehow managed to keep it running through several hardware and OS upgrades.

Picked up Arena in a bargain bin at some point, but couldn't get it to run. Think I've still got the CD around here somewhere.

Played almost all of the way through Battlespire (CD got the scratch of death over a critical sound file and I didn't feel like special-ordering a replacement). Was one of the Redguard testers (can still hear it: "would you please find Izara and come to bed?"). Got Morrowind and Oblivion within a day or two of their releases. Yep, I've definitely received my money's worth from the good folks at Bethesda.

[canis216]

It started when a friend of mine in college got Morrowind, and I would just watch him play. The game world was so interesting, and his adventures so entertaining, that I would just watch him play for hours. Seriously. A couple months later I saw the game on sale (cheap) at the big Target in Cedar Rapids and picked it up. I was hooked instantly, of course.

[bbqplatypus]

I believe it was back in aught-three or aught-four. My parents are divorced, so my siblings and I would visit my dad periodically for certain weekends. He had a few games down there for us while we were there, and one of those games was Morrowind.

We mostly played it casually, never getting particularly far. Usually we just ran around and did whatever we felt like. Of course, we were low-level, so we couldn't do all that much. I don't know if any of us stuck with a particular saved game for all that long. It's not like you can do much for two weekends a month.

I joined the Legion and did one or two quests for them usually. One thing that ALL of us were impressed by was the sheer size, scope, and uniqueness of the world. We had the map of Vvardenfell posted near the computer. It all seemed so huge that I couldn't possibly hope to understand it all. It was magnificent and truly engaged my imagination.

Finally (it might have been as much as a year later - I'm not sure), I decided entirely on my own initiative to take the game home and play it for real this time. And the rest is history.

I got sucked into Vvardenfell on several different occasions. I think it was the second (or was it the third?) time around that I got hit the hardest. The immersive experience for me was total - I didn't think of it as "playing a game" or interacting with what basically amounted to static conversation popup windows. I thought of it like it was real, in a sense. Or at least I wished it was. I was "in character" throughout. In that regard, it turned me into a crazy person, blurring the line between fantasy and reality.

So yeah...I've been TES-crazy ever since.

[saqin]

Well, when Oblivion first came out there was loads of news about it, but it took a good while before dad bought it(I was around 11, 12 years old.) Then I watched dad play it, tried it a few times but was to scared to kill anything, meaning I mostly ran around admiring the landscape.

[Captain Hammer]

My uncle had just gotten a new system a couple years after 2000, so he gave my brother and I his old system along with a classic Super NES and Sega Genesis (there is a reason that this man is my godfather). Well, after finally getting the compy up and running, we checked out what games he had given us. And what was in that bin?

Hmmmm..., can't remember anything but two games from somebody called 'Bethesda' called "The Elder Scrolls" series, Arena and Daggerfall.

Well, we tried to get through Arena, and finally got so fed up that he came and showed us a few tricks to get us out that first dungeon. From then on, my bro and I were entertained, but not enthralled, it was something to do when we had time on our hands.

And then we moved to Florida, and a new buddy I met at school told me about a new Elder Scrolls game, and I was like "Yeah, I played the first two, never bothered with those one-off sequels. I don't want another glitchy game like Daggerfall."

After my buddy nearly beat me senseless upside the head with a history textbook, he lent me Morrowind the next day. One install later and I was floored. I almost didn't want to give the game back, but was forced to do so, upset and angry. But there was a Best Buy in convenient biking distance from my new place, so after saving some money, and waiting for GOTY edition to come out, over I went, bought the game, and got home.

The rest, they say, is history. It has gotten to the point that I now get computers with an eye towards future upgrades in anticipation of the next Elder Scrolls release. I'm going back through Oblivion now, and a buddy at college asked me to Beta-test a huge Morrowind mod called "Balanced Scales." Fun stuff.

[Destri Melarg]

I remember the first time I saw the box cover art for Morrowind on the X-box. The game said that I could create any kind of character I wanted, that sold it to me. I took it home with images of the dark elf I would create dancing in my head. Imagine my surprise when I put the game in, turned it on, and discovered Redguards!

Now I came to this genre as a hard core sports gamer (College Hoops 2K, NBA 2K, and Madden FTW) so I was used to being able to play as a ‘black’ character. Unfortunately most shooters and action games of the time pigeon-holed you into playing as a specific character, like Master Chief or Ryu (don't get me wrong, I love Ninja Gaiden, Halo not so much, but still it was noticeable).

With Morrowind I got introduced to Redguards; the ‘most naturally talented warriors in all of Tamriel’ were still as dumb as a bag of hammers, but who cares? I created a Redguard Sorcerer born under the sign of the Mage and rolled on from there. The first thing he did after leaving the census office was explore the first tomb he found up the coast north of Seyda Nean. In that tomb he found the Mentor’s Ring which went a long way toward helping him to master the magical arts. For the first time in a non-sports game genre I got to play as a character that resembled me. I’ve been hooked on the Elder Scrolls ever since.