10 Video Games With Genuinely Impressive Level Design

Developer Bethesda Softworks are famous for making games set in huge open worlds. But as beloved as these time-devouring settings are, there's something to be said for the more narrow scope of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

Before automated, plug-and-play development tools made subsequent entries in the series like Oblivion and Skyrim more efficient to build, allowing for those enormous maps, Morrowind had to be crafted by hand. While this meant that the game was limited to a small region of its namesake province, the attention to detail was, by necessity, expertly crafted.

It's hard to imagine now, but before conveniences like compass way points and fast travel, Morrowind relied on NPC directions to tell you where to go. In modern open-world games this would be a nightmare. But in the more richly realized world of Morrowind? It worked.

You came to know places like specific Dwarven ruins or ancestral tombs by name. An NPC telling you to follow the eastern path just beyond the Abebaal Egg Mine was like telling someone visiting your home town to turn right at any recognizable local landmark. It felt like a real place.