Hello peeps. Life’s thrown me some curve-balls recently, and I’d like a bit of an escape. Can anyone recommend a decent game in the vein of Skyrim, Fallout or Deus Ex/System Shock for the steam deck, that isn’t 25 or 30 quid please? Something on offer for less than a tenner would be ideal. I’m sure there are some great older RPGs out there that I’ve missed, the Deck is the first time I’ve got back into gaming for quite a few years, and while I’m sure I could quite happily just play Brotato for the next few years, I reckon there’s something a bit more immersive out there for me to find!
Based on the games you listed, Morrowind! One of my absolute favorite old RPGs. Out of the elder scrolls games it’s the one with the strongest world building, which paints a nuanced picture of a very strange and compelling world. Compared to Skyrim in particular it’s more like a pen-and-paper rpg and less like an action game which gives it a higher barrier to entry. In particular, a lot of people find the combat frustrating at the start.
The modding community for the game is very active to this day. To begin with, there’s OpenMW which is a re-implementation of the engine that runs natively on Linux and contains various bug fixes and quality of life features. There’s also a fork of it, tes3mp, which allows you to play Morrowind in multiplayer!
There’s also Tamriel Rebuilt which is a modding project that adds the mainland of Morrowind (the base game just takes place on an island called Vvardenfell) and adds maybe another game worth of content. Theres also Project Tamriel which has one project that recreates Skyrim based on Morrowind-era lore and one that recreates Cyrodiil based on Morrowind-era lore.