My mom got me an OG Xbox around the time that the 360 came out, and a couple of games. The copy of Splinter Cell was undoubtedly my dad's contribution to the conversation, but I remember my mom telling me later that she had never really heard of this "Morrowind" game but she asked the Gamestop employee for a game that was like Zelda, since we both previously loved playing Zelda on our SNES and N64. The guy recommended Morrowind and I figure it was probably a 50/50 shot that he did either that, or Fable.

I played Fable later on as an adult and it's a fine game, but I owe a great debt of gratitude to a man I will never meet who allowed me to experience Morrowind in its entirety in my early teens. I went into that game completely blind and knowing nothing about anything other than what was in the game manual. I then went on to play it almost obsessively for the next eight years and continue to play it to this day about once a year or two. It is one of my very favorite games to exist and one of my favorite expressions of video games as art. Michael Kirkbride is a mad genius and I hang on his every word. Vivec is one of my favorite characters in fiction. I remember the layout of Balmora better than I remember the layout of some of my childhood homes. I love this game.