The Elder Scrolls is one of the most illustrious sagas in video game history, which is perhaps why Skyrim has been ported to everything short of a calculator over the last eight years. However, although Skyrim and its predecessor Oblivion are vast oceans containing a wealth of wonderfully intricate curios, their oft-overlooked older sibling Morrowind is a bottomless lake, its boundless depths plummeting into the territories of magic, secrecy, and the unknown.

Since Morrowind launched in 2002, players have been exploring its every nook and cranny, desperately seeking to unravel its most intimately hidden secrets. Perhaps the most accomplished of these Morrowind mystery hunters is Redditor OccupyTamriel, who has discovered countless hidden treasures buried in Morrowind's deepest recesses.

"I started playing Elder Scrolls when a very dear friend of mine told me about the series," OccupyTamriel tells me. "I needed a lot of time to get used to Morrowind - the sheer complexity of the world and the mechanics, the invisible per-attack dice roll, and just being lost and making no progress were extremely off-putting."

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To mark the end of the 2010s, we're celebrating 30 games that defined the last 10 years. You can find all the articles as they're published in the Games of the Decade archive, and read about our thinking about it in an editor's blog.

It's hard to think of a game that's been subject to just as much revisionism as Skyrim. Maybe that's to be expected, given its dizzying success. The game is everywhere and its cultural reach is almost insurmountable - so much so that the jokes about climbing mountains, taking arrows and porting to toasters have all been unfashionably irksome for much longer than they were ever funny in the first place. And with all that success comes the inevitable and insufferable "not that good actually" crowd.

But they are wrong! Skyrim is good, actually. Exactly as good as everyone says it is. And it is good for a lot of reasons but none of them as truly special, I think, as its world - or rather, more specifically, the ineffable rules that bind it. There is an intangible realism to Skyrim's world that I haven't really felt in a game of its budget and scope since. It's in the mechanics of it - the literal mechanics; the basic billiard balls of the physics - and the best example I can think of, for some reason, is pushing people off a ledge.

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Five of the Best is a weekly series celebrating the poor old parts of games we tend to overlook. Not the glitzy bits but the supporting cast. Things like crowds - whoever stops to think about a crowd? And how do you think that makes the crowd feel? But the games they're in wouldn't be the same without them, so let's big them up a bit, shall we?

Also, I want your ideas! I want to know what you remember when you read the title of this week's piece, the things that spring to mind. Don't worry about what I think, no one ever does, but do jump in the comments below. We've had some lovely discussions and you've remembered loads of great details about games.You can find all the previous Five of the Bests in a handy archive.

So, on to today's five. But how to summit up...?

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The people behind Skywind have released a gameplay demo of the mod - and it's pretty impressive.

The gameplay video, below, shows off how the modders have recreated Morrowind in the Skyrim engine. We see the player pick up a bounty in town, head off out into the wild and into a dungeon to kill the target before returning for a reward.

This is classic The Elder Scrolls stuff and on the face of it not particularly groundbreaking, but there's a level of polish here we don't often see from mods. The music, voice acting and town AI is all present and correct, and we even get to see some spear combat.

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The volunteer-based group TESRenewel has released a new teaser trailer showing the incredible progress it's made on the mod to remake Oblivion in the Skyrim engine.

Skyblivion started life back in 2012 with the aim to bring The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion to a new generation of gamers, and seven years on it's clearly made some great progress, though no news of when we'll see a playable version just yet.

"We have been hard at work these past few years and recently a lot of that work has fallen into place, finally shaping up to what we can call a proper video game," writes project lead Rebelize. "It's been a long ride but we are finally at a point where the end is almost in sight.

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Five of the Best is going to be a series! Every Friday lunchtime, UK time, we're going to celebrate a different incidental detail from the world of games. The kind of thing we usually just WASD past, oblivious. But also the kind of thing which adds unforgettable flavour if done right.

Potions! We've been drinking them for years. In games I mean! I hope you haven't been knocking them back in real-life, they're bad for you. Imagine drinking something which alters your behaviour - how ridiculous! But potions we've been drinking for years. Red ones, blue ones... They're so common they've become a universal language. We don't even really see them any more. We just slosh them back when needed. Gulp!

But every so often, we do see them. Once in a while, a memorable potion pops up. Maybe it was a potion which typified a game for you - the port-key to remembering an adventure. A tonic from BioShock, perhaps. Or maybe it was one which made a character drastically more capable, or one which changed who - or what - we were. Can you think of any now? Good - hold onto that! Because I want your input below.

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The controversial Skyrim Together mod has reemerged with the release of nightly builds.

Lead programmer Max Griot took to the Skyrim Together subreddit to issue the long-awaited update promising nightly builds, the first of which is available to download now.

Skyrim Together, which pulls in $14,746 per month from nearly 15,000 patrons on Patreon, aims to add online multiplayer to Bethesda's hugely popular open-world fantasy RPG, but it's been some time since the Patreon-only playtest held earlier this year.

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Apparently a very popular TV series has been airing its final season over the past few weeks - and you may have heard that one of its episodes had an extra special treat for keen-eyed viewers: a Starbucks coffee cup accidentally left on-set.

Naturally, the photo was instantly spread around the internet and became an overnight sensation. In fact, it's now spilling into the world of Skyrim, as several modders have answered a call to create Starbucks cups for the world of The Elder Scrolls.

Reddit user DarkMaster06 began the craze by putting out a mod request in r/skyrimmods, which swiftly prompted many to offer up their work. I tested out this one by Sphered (via Nexusmods), which places a single coffee cup on the banquet table in Dragonsreach (and also the Solitude throne room). Here I am doing my best to recreate the iconic scene. Please ignore the raccoon eye makeup - my Skyrim character never left the teen phase.

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The controversial Skyrim Together mod is once again under scrutiny after its chief creator declared: "we don't owe the community anything."

Lead programmer Max Griot took to the Skyrim Together subreddit to respond to a thread titled "is something going to happen?" that was posted after months of radio silence on the project.

Skyrim Together aims to add online multiplayer to Bethesda's hugely popular open-world fantasy RPG, and pulls in an impressive $18,284 a month on Patreon.

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Ever thought you could do a better job than Legolas at the Battle of Helm's Deep? Well now you can prove it, as the final version of this incredible Lord of the Rings Skyrim mod has just been published.

The Elder Scrolls V Middle-Earth began back in 2014 and has seen several updates, but Maldaran told me the Redone version adds new content, solves bugs, re-works the portal corridor and streamlines all the past versions into one neat package.

The remarkable one-person project, made by 26-year-old Maldaran from Germany, allows PC players to explore many of the most famous locations in Lord of the Rings, including The Shire, Lothlorien and Rivendell. You can re-enact the Battle of Helm's Deep, fight goblins in the mines of Moria and even battle the Balrog. Players can also craft Mithril armour, and Maldaran told me the latest version introduces even more craftable items, along with new spells to learn.

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