no one actually tells you this but Morrowind is not about adventure, it is about political intrigue and being used and using others for your own ends. There are (almost) no Quests in morrowind besides the main quest, all the rest are just Jobs. They are work that you do for money, power and illiquid capital (cool artifacts of power which you can use to get more money and power). You don't join the fighters guild to save them from being werewolves, you join them for the steady income and the ability to rise in the ranks, access to specialist services only available to members, and to make connections with other employers. Being an adventurer means you are a professional, not a hero!
Even the main quest, which is nominally quite magical and loaded with theology and myth, while still being a grand and epic Quest in the way nearly nothing else in Morrowind is, is itself about politics and intrigue. In the end, the affairs of the devil and the god kings and even the incarnate saviour of the dunmer are the story of tawdry political machinations writ large, made epic only by their scale. Even with all the esotericism and opaque theologies and competing mythohistories, and theres a lot of that, no one makes it out of the muck of the real. Everyone in morrowind, even the grandest villain, are People with opinions and motivations. No one is purely sympathetic nor purely unsympathetic, there are very few Good Guys you can join and very few purely evil villains to smite.
And this is what sets it apart from almost any other RPG, even others who are also going for the professional angle like the Witcher. This is what the modders at TR and PT have been creating with the expanded Morrowind mainland and other provinces. Morrowind (the game) is a Place, in the way that "Star Trek is a place". This is not to say that it is 'better' than these other games, but it is doing something different, something that you just don't get in most video games. And on top of that, thanks to Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel, it's gamespace is now about as expansive as an MMO, it's almost impossible to run out of new things to do in new ways in new places.
blakekathryn
snowghoul
origamiaround
dededos
prguitarman
