It’s dark, and the sticky swamp air is alive with the chirps and burps of the critters who call this mucky mire their home. Step after deliberate step, I skulk through this territory with weapon in hand. It is sharp, it is deadly, it is the bane of mine enemies. And then, movement! The creature squawks a feeble battle cry, and its spindly legs carry its carapace forward into attack. I see an opportunity, and I take it, swinging my blade into the invertebrate beast, cleaving its hea— whoa, hey, um… wait. Nothing happened. I swing again; nothing. So much for the whole bane of mine enemies thing.

Pictured: Terror

The game is Morrowind, and I can still remember the first time I disembarked from that prison ship at the Seyda Neen docks. I interacted with NPC I could see, stole everything that wasn’t nailed down, and I embraced my prophesied duties as Nerevarine with gusto, bringing an end to Dagoth Ur and his schemes.

It was a different time, a more innocent era, when the fledgling concept of a massive, open world RPG was still the domain of a MMOs like Everquest, Ultima Online, and those other ones that no one played/cared about. Though there had been Elder Scrolls past, Morrowind was a major step toward modernity with its huge 3D world (smaller than that of previous TES games, but absent the randomness and now-hideous sprites) and open-ended gameplay.

It was at this same time that another huge leap forward was being made, though, and it had serious implications for the way we played games like this. You see, Morrowind wasn’t just being enjoyed by those of us with PCs. The Xbox was a console unlike any other of its time. It was bigger, badder, and more powerful than anything Sony or Nintendo had on offer, and that opened it up to games of a type that would not be seen on competing systems. Namely, the Xbox had Morrowind.

Console gamers were being given a taste of Tamriel, and they were loving it. I recall, in fact, that I was one of the few in my group of friends that played the game with a mouse and keyboard, and I scoffed at the others who thought that they were getting the same experience with just a (ridiculously huge) controller. Morrowind, I thought, was just too big for anything other than a computer, and to think otherwise was just blasphemy.

*clickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclickclick*

Four years and two expansions later, Oblivion was released, and we had a new king of the open world RPG. But those of us who booted up Oblivion on our PCs and popped nerd-stiffies at the familiar opening theme were in for a surprise as soon as we got into the actual game. Specifically, the first combat. In the dungeon catacombs of the Imperial City, that first rat to bound to my feet was met quite casually, and as I began to click away at— wait… did I… did I just hit the thing on the first click? And the second? DEAR GOD, IT’S A MIRACLE!

Believe it or not, but a sword swing in Oblivion did not result in a series of virtual D20 rolls that would determine if you made contact. A sword swing in Oblivion resulted in a dead rat. A dead zombie. A dead goblin. Trails of dead rats and zombies and goblins. It felt, dare I say it, immersive!  Not only in the combat, but no longer needing to hop around from place to place like a sugar-frenzied 5 year old dressed in Dwemer armor to increase my acrobatics was a huge relief as well. And who did I have to thank for this sea change in gameplay? Those fucking console kids.

What was routine and expected for a PC gamer, raised on older RPGs, MUDs, and other outlandishly complicated games was unthinkable for a console gamer who grew up only needing two buttons to stomp the SHIT out of some Koopas. The Xbox, like its contemporaries, was a powerful system for gaming, PURELY for gaming. It was for people who wanted to boot up a game, play it, be satisfied by it, and move along. PCs did more than that. Instead of being purpose built for it, gaming was just one of the many features available to a PC user. We had different expectations, different points of view on how games should be played, from console users.

By this point my index finger LITERALLY fell off.

Fast forward to today, and the icon of gaming awesomeness that is Skyrim. It is to Oblivion what Oblivion was to Morrowind. I played some Morrowind last night, in fact, just for the nostalgia factor, and, spoiled by Skyrim in how far the genre has come, I just wasn’t feeling it. The scenario that opens this article describes that first experience back on Vvardenfell, and my despair at engaging a lowly scrib in combat only to find that even with the best starting equipment my hard-stolen Septims could buy I was still a slave to the click-click-click nature of games past. I could only imagine how much more annoying it must have been to play with an Xbox controller, that massive plastic brick engineered for a more streamlined and casual gaming saddled with the repetition of these ancient PC game mechanics that, frankly, even we PC knew could be handled better.

I’ve been a PC gamer since I was but a three year old playing Spy Hunter on a Commodore 64, and I don’t see myself changing. I’ve owned consoles, and I’ve enjoyed consoles, but I just prefer the experience of a PC for plenty of reasons. And yet, as I grow older and time becomes more and more valuable, well, I just don’t have the time or attention span for that kind of stat-heavy, repetitive gameplay that had once been so engrossing for me. With the kind of immersion one can find from Skyrim’s lighter, more casual experience, I’m finding myself to be a convert. This is why I can now say that I, for one, welcome our new console overlords.

Agree?  Disagree?  Argue about it in the comments!