Returning to Morrowind

Last week I reinstalled TES3: Morrowind on my computer. This unique 1st/3rd person roleplaying game is 8 years old but keeps pulling me back into its world. The game still has a large community of players who contribute mods and discuss new ways to enjoy it. Morrowind is a fantasy world set on the volcanic island of Vvaardenfall. The island is alien, with a geography forged by powerful eruptions and the forces of great wizardry. The inhabitants are resourceful, independent and come from a rich cultural and racial heritage and their gods literally walk among them; this land’s identity is unique and compelling.

The land of Vvaardenfall goes on without the character, who has to prove him or herself worthy of the land’s and people’s attention. When I first played the game nobody on the island cared whether my character succeeded or not, they had their own problems. At first, I found it strange and off-putting that my character wasn't the center of attention. I'm used to playing games where the fate of the world rests on my shoulders from the very beginning of the game. to show my significance to Vvaardenfall, I had to stumble through Morrowind's giant mushroom-shaped trees and ominous floating creatures until I had become acquainted with enough important people for me to be unignorable.

I could have re-played the game’s sequel, Oblivion, another good game with a large supporting community, but it is not as good. The atmosphere and architecture of the game are slightly more derived. For example, classically beautiful structures jut into the sky and white marble pillars surround temples which are reminiscent of the ancient Greek or Roman world. Buildings and cottages are idyllic and reflect a countryside you may have seen in a British painting. It is all very pastoral. The game environment is lush, but it becomes too easy for the player to supplant the game’s atmosphere with some fantasy epic they’ve seen or read before. The game’s identity becomes a little lost as a result. Contrast Oblivion’s environment with that created in Morrowind. The difference is stark.

I come back to Morrowind precisely because the game world is so unusual. There is something about the atmosphere of the game that compels a player to keep coming back. The architecture of the world is linked environmentally and culturally to the people that inhabit this place. Wizards of the East live in towers grown from the ground, conveying both beauty and the power they wield over their realm. Traders in the north live in the shells of giant extinct creatures. This land’s identity is unique and cannot be confused for a Tolkien book or Forgotten Realms adventure. When I discovered that those floating creatures are what pass for cattle in this land, I found it both amusing and completely sensible given the world’s lack of traditional animals.

In fact, the very first time I played the game I only played for a few hours before stopping. The world was harsh and I didn’t quite get how to play so I stopped. I was unused to being thrust into a world and then left to fend for myself and do as I please. What, you mean I don’t have to follow the main storyline, every single location is unlocked to me, where’s the one hour tutorial location? I went back to my other games, unready for this freedom. But it nagged at me. The idea of Morrowind kept creeping into my thoughts. I wanted to explore it. So I reinstalled and read about it more online. Maybe if I had the right character or read a few walkthroughs I would get into it enough to stay in.

The second time I played the game I was a bit slower and more careful creating my character. I did some reading on character creation and decided that starting off as a generalist was the best approach, once I had survival down, I could get into the stuff that looked really cool. I played through the early game carefully, clearing out the cave near Seyda Neen, doing all the local quests, and befriending a local elf who had misplaced his ring. I said my farewells and took the silt strider on to Balmora to get acquainted with the politics of Morrowind. Balmora is a trader’s town full of pawn shops, alchemists, armorers and clothiers. Despite how cosmopolitan the city was, it was still divided into upper and lower class areas. Upper class located west and overlooking the city, low income along the river and East. It wasn’t a Baldur’s Gate, but with my paltry athletics skill I was hobbling along slowly enough that it felt like trekking a metropolis.

Balmora guards were stern and told me to keep moving, strangers didn’t have much time to talk, and people in the Comona Tong hangout were downright rude. I wanted to go directly to Caius Cossades, he was my contact in the city and currently the only one that might have the reasons why my character was sent to this island. He was also my only link to the main storyline and central quests. He introduced himself and then sent me on my way, to come back when I was ready to follow some of his orders. Here came that freedom again, he wasn’t going to hold my hand through this; he needed work done and he needed a capable person to do it.

The freedom of the game threw me off again! So I was evidently supposed to explore a little and gain a few levels before coming back to him. But I was unused to this amount of freedom in an RPG and worried about breaking the central quest by accidentally killing/robbing a future ally or entering the home and stealing a weapon that may prove necessary to the end game. So I hesitated and looked online for some answers. That’s when I discovered the mods. Here was a way to play and not worry about breaking the game; I would just add more stuff to do in Morrowind that was unrelated to the main story.

Morrowind’s great asset is its modding community. It is large and there are so many mods, ranging from small things like a house for the player in Seyda Neen, to huge world changing mods like Tamriel Rebuilt - which adds a huge additional landmass. I couldn’t stop adding mods! It was like crack. I stopped playing the game. Instead I spent all of my time reading about different mods, looking at the screenshots and adding them to the game. I added gigabytes of data, only loading the game to see the new mod in action. Back and forth this went on. I rarely left Balmora. Eventually I overpowered my character without ever getting into combat or getting close to progressing along the main storyline. I never went back to Caius Cossades for orders, I never played the central storyline, I barely explored the island! I had become saturated with mods and I had lost the connection to the spirit of the game.

I grew bored and stopped playing, eventually wiping the game from the hard drive. I played other games that were newer and prettier. I worked, lived life etc., but then the idea came back to me. Maybe I should revisit the island of Vvaardenfall one more time? Do it right, I said to myself, no more crazy mods that give you wings or the sword from Final Fantasy. Just the ones that update the game so it doesn’t look so old. So I reinstalled the game. For a third time. I spent about a week choosing mods, making sure that the mods didn’t add new content, but merely updated old content. I added higher resolution graphics, better meshes, updated faces and body textures, modded the in-game armor so it looked better and fit better. I pieced together a list of mods that turned the game from an 8 year old game into a 3 year old game. I double clicked, loaded and created a new character.

I played through the entire central storyline to the end and the answer to why I was on this island gradually became clearer. The story is compelling, and your character’s actions to get to the end walk a fine line of moral ambiguity. The story was epic, but brought to you in pieces that separated you from the grand schemers until close to the end. In the same vein, Baldur’s Gate didn’t show its first of two major revelations until very close to the endgame. Whether you felt Morrowind had an epic storyline or a mundane one depends on who you are as a player and what kind of character you have created. If I had rushed through the main storyline of the game on the first playthrough, I would have missed much of the enjoyment. In other words, because I didn’t listen to Caius Cossades and get to know the island, I just wasn’t ready to know. The story reminds me a little bit of Dune, by Frank Herbert. If you have played the game then I hope what I have said will ping with you. What I know now I wish I could have told myself sooner; it was worth it.

Now I’m reinstalling the game for the fourth time. I am coming back to explore parts of Vvaardenfall I didn’t go to before, do quests I missed, explore the lands brought in with the expansions Tribunal and Bloodmoon and also explore lands added by lore-friendly mods such as Tamriel Rebuilt. I am also coming back to revisit a place I’ve already been. It’s kind of like going on vacation to the same place twice; you see more, you do more, you learn more. I’m picking good mods again, which requires time to get the best versions of those mods and make sure there aren’t any incompatibility issues. I am going to try to complete all the game’s sidequests.

There is so much emergent gameplay in this game that I could probably come back to this game a fifth and sixth time and get something out of it. I can now see how I might play again in the future- by adding challenging mods that make it necessary to eat and sleep regularly, to hunt for your food. Or I could add mods that add farming or the ability to run a business, or economy mods. I could play through as a purist, leveling only through repeated actions without paying gold for skill increases. I could play as someone decidedly evil, killing everyone, and become a vampire or werewolf. I might even get around to making my own mods. I have tried two or three times, but I only ever half finished them because I was overzealous in the scope of my creations. Next time, I will start small and finish the mod.

If you are interested in visiting Morrowind again then I recommend that you install some mods to refresh the game's textures, meshes and visual effects. Stay posted for my running list of lore friendly Morrowind mods.