Well... it's finally happened. I knew it would around the first time Lydia displayed her masochistic tendencies by running in the path of my fireball spells. This was only further compounded when I realized she was in to blood play as well, of the sort induced by getting between my axe and a Draugr's head. But despite it all, by a combination of luck and frequent saving and reloading, I managed to keep her alive well into my 30s.

Alas, at one point I entered a ruin populated by necromancers where, due to being overawed by my newly created legendary ebony axe (with 25 points of lightning damage) I forgot to save as frequently as I usually do. And after one battle against a mage and a reanimated wolf, I noticed an ominous silence. I looked around and saw my steadfast shadow, Lydia, was missing. At first I was irritated, thinking she had merely gotten lost or stuck against a rock (or since that is likely giving her too much credit, more like a pebble). But a quick investigation of the corpses found that my anger was premature. She was dead. I do not know how or why it happened, whether it was the mage, wolf, me, or simply the toll of time and far too many fireballs to the head. Whatever the case, the companion I had been monogamous to for over 70 hours was dead and gone.

The 30-60 minutes of the castle I would have to replay if I reloaded proved too much an effort for me to resurrect her, so I did the only thing I could. I cleared a nearby table of useless clutter, and carried Lydia to it. I took off her enchanted ebony bow, ebony battleaxe and helmet, and default iron shield, and set the weapons on the table. Then, after many attempts and curses against the physics engine of the game, I managed to lay Lydia on top of them, the bow resting under her right hand, the axe under her left. I set the helmet by her head, and the shield on her lap, and marveled at my work. She looked almost like Boromir on his funeral boat, only on a table in a necromancer's lair instead. They even shared the same solemn and peaceful expression, although Lydia's was somewhat ruined by the odd angle her head was twisted and the fact that it did not rest against the table.

It was a shame to part with such powerful ebony artifacts, of which I had but few at that time, but it felt necessary. Lydia may have not been the brightest of people. She made redundant observations of "Hey, a cave!" after we had already entered the cave, and complained passive aggressively about having to carry my stuff. She would get stuck against rocks and ledges, would have difficulty following me and would require to be shoved and shouted at sometimes in order to get her past the obstacle. But despite these failings, she had been a loyal and useful companion to me during the lower levels, when her martial strength kept my magicka-depleted ass alive. For that, I honored her with a funeral, and equipment to take to Sovengard that I would miss far more than her.

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This eulogy out of the way, I have some gripes with Skyrim I'd like to mention. It's an immensely enjoyable game, and even 80 or so hours into it I still have probably only explored half the world (maybe a little more) and visited only four of the cities. But it is not without faults, and with the graphics fueled euphoria receding now that I've gotten used to them, I am more prepared to talk about them.

First, the loot system. In 80 hours, there has been only one item I found that I was genuinely happy to discover. That was an ebony bow that I found in a giant's cave while my level was still in the early 20s. Other than that, every piece of loot is boring. Stores all sell a broader range of equipment than can be found in any typical castle or cave, and smithing makes new equipment practically useless anyway. I was collecting glass weapons and still did not use any of them, because none of them were stronger than my Skyforge Waraxe, which I had only upgraded to superior rank. Even the only deadric artifacts I've found so far are only marginally better than generic items. The Mace of Molag Bal makes a nice decoration for my house, but I saw no point in using it as a weapon. Its strength was not overly high, and its enchantments lackluster. My current self enchanted ebony axe is many times superior to it. None of the items in this game feel truly unique or interesting (aside from the so far disappointing deadric artifacts). Even when they are more powerful than my current things, they only feel like a generic item of a higher order of randomized equipment.

My other complaint, and one that irks me far more than the first, is the number of immortal characters in the game. What's even worse, their immortality wasn't even well implemented, because I can repeatedly "kill" certain characters only to have them rise up and ask me about the weather, as though suffering amnesia about the incident due to the brain damage I caused them.

Anyway, that's all for now, and all that springs to mind... But the conclusion I'm unwillingly drawing toward is that Morrowind > Skyrim.

EDIT: How could I have forgotten? Another major issue that I have... Directions. Or lack thereof. Would it kill the developers to at least make a pretense of immersing me into the game? It's really irritating when I spend a conversation with someone trying to get them to tell me where I'm supposed to go for their quest instead of just agreeing to it immediately, only to find there is no such dialogue. Instead you simply get a journal entry that says you're going to X. This system would work perfectly if I made the quest active, and simply followed the compass arrow wherever it pointed, but I don't do that. In fact, I keep the arrow on my current main quest and ignore it afterward, but Skyrim is clearly not designed for people who do that.