The Literary Merit of Morrowind

Gamers with Jobs has a piece looking at the literary achievement that is Morrowind. The author discusses the depth of Elder Scrolls III and contemplates the upcoming release of the fourth game in the series. From the article: "It comes down to this: In spite of my having devoted dozens of hours to conquering its enormity, I have only ever scratched the surface of Morrowind, the previous game in the Elder Scrolls series. I am frankly unprepared to move on to any further games in the series, knowing that there remains much to do in the previous installment. And with your permission, I would now like to inflict my piddling insecurities upon you, if only for a short time--after which, feel free to remove the wax."

Comments

Huge Big Game

[TomHenderson]

I'm still in the first 1/3 of Morrowind, and enjoying it. I actually find the enormity of the game freeing--I'm gonna be playing this sucker so long, I don't feel any need to upgrade to an XBox 360 (or bigger PC) to take on Oblivion. By the time I "finish" Morrowind, Oblivion's going to be in the discount bin, or on the Platinum list.

It's kind of like the Everlasting Gobstopper of video games.

Re:Huge Big Game

[caffeination]

Morrowind reached the point of obsession for me. I built a beautiful thieves guild mod with hidden trapdoors to hideouts in each guild, plus a nice little extension to the balmora guild. My specialty was stealing. I stole everything, including that stupid heavy hammer that's of no real use whatsoever. I used to love coming up with newer and cleverer ways to steal. I used stealing to build a character with bought training, just to experience the parts of the game I was less interested in earning, and even that was worth it.

Even today, all this time later, I could easily fire Morrowind up and play it. I still do from time to time, but only on the Xbox since I moved 100% to Linux on the PC. I've even done the hacks necessary to run mods on the Xbox (if you're thinking of doing this, be aware that it does hurt framerate - they optimised the Xbox version quite well).

Only problem is that with so much intimacy with a game, you really start to see the flaws, and they really dig into the suspension of disbelief - Morrowind has some major freaky stuff that you don't notice at first. Even so, enjoy it while it lasts man, Morrowind is one of the best games I've ever played.

Just don't get into the vain habit of giving a shit about Tamriel Rebuilt. Those guys are extreme addiction cases.

Actually,

[Odin_Tiger]

Actually, the books in Morrowind can be quite entertaining. And if you're too lazy to hunt down all the parts of a series, you can always just open up the construction set and copy the text from there into your favorite editor (though I personally was obsessive about collecting things every time I played Morrowind.)

Or, if even that is too much effort, this is a good site with the text of most / all books from the game available for your browsing pleasure.

'The Wolf Queen' is probably my favorite series from the game.

I know what you mean

[shoma-san]

"In spite of my having devoted dozens of hours to conquering its enormity, I have only ever scratched the surface of Morrowind..." That's why I don't eat at buffets.

Re:Why no mention of Daggerfall?

[Tetris Ling]

My outstanding memory of Daggerfall is finding out it had corrupted all of my save games after an all night session with the game. After I stopped screaming, I booted up the game again, and started playing a new character.

Not many games can have you coming back after that kind of abuse.

Details

[syylk]

I think this is one of the best games ever.

The graphics, hm, maybe. The freedom, yes, interesting. The depth and complexity, again, is only a brick in a larger wall. The usual "gamer values" all apply to this title, no doubts.

But still, what I found really astonishing during countless hours in Vvardenfell was the literature: the raw amount of "things to read" is per se staggering, but has also what I consider an extremely well done achievement, and done particularly well in Morrowind.

Every event of history has been recorded with the "natural" bias and spin of the writer and the faction recording it. It's filology and storiography at its best, and the authors needed to take uttermost care in proposing different viewpoints on "facts" that are invariably narrated by a biased narrator.

All the major events of the plots are written down in at least a couple of factions' "official version". And if you listen to each faction, each and every one of them is deeply convinced that their official version is THE only reasonable version.

And IMHO to discover what really happened is the true quest of the game. Deciding who's right and who's wrong. Or who is enough right for you to follow and enough wrong for you to fight against, is in itself a breathtaking experience. Like in real world, you have views on facts, never raw facts, to help you form your own opinion on what's your duty to accomplish.

I think this aspect alone - very often misunderstood and underestimated by gamers and reviewers - is what makes me put TESIII:Morrowind on the pedestal of best game ever.

The rest of more mundane achievements, technical or strictly gameplay oriented, are minor compared to this aspect, merely functional, if you wish, to the presentation of a world where the Truth is never only one.

I'm very, very glad this game and its expansions still work decently on my aging linux+cedega rig. Till I bought cedega, I kept a win partition only for it.