The Elder Scrolls Online Recapturing the Spirit of Morrowind

An article on PC Gamer describes the ways in which the upcoming expansion for The Elder Scrolls Online tries to recreate the ambiance of the highly-regarded The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. According to the article, the online iteration of The Elder Scrolls series actually succeeds in doing so. A few paragraphs:

Poor Eoki just can’t catch a break. I first saw the hapless Argonian huddling in a corner of a dirty island hut where we’d been stashed as newly captured slaves, and he followed me when I leapt into the surrounding waters in a daring escape alongside an assassin. And now, here in Sadrith Mora, hugging the eastern rim of the island of Vvardenfell, I find him in chains again. Four times he tried to escape after our escapade, and four times slavers drug him back. Now he’s stuck toiling for Telvanni mages who bought him for a discount and don’t give a damn for the Ebonheart Pact’s ban on slavery.

I offer to free him myself, but he says he’s going to be all right. He knows someone, you see—a fellow Argonian slave named Sun-in-Shadow who happens to be pretty handy with magic herself. It’s more than mere trust: he’s smitten with her. And now Eoki’s pleading with me to go help Sun-in-Shadow with whatever she needs to rise through the Telvanni ranks and free them both.

This is the questline that captured my heart and attention in the closed beta for The Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind. Others had me chatting with demigods and helping with the construction of the cantons of Vivec City, but it’s this one that best shows what to expect from this new expansion. It’s this one that shows ZeniMax Online gets Morrowind, while at the same time demonstrating that it’s not hobbling itself with nostalgia.

[…]

Ordinarily I’d need a map, but I knew where to go. This, after all, is Vvardenfell, the setting of one of the finest RPGs ever made, and the expansion’s aimed largely at us who knew it well. In the early 2000s, beholding Morrowind’s mushroom forests and complex social structures felt like a revelation, leading me to wear Morrowind shirts around my graduate school campus in the hopes someone would notice and share my joy. I’d say my awe at the breadth of its imagination largely put me on the career path I’m on today.

I know the poetry of its place names—Balmora, Ald’ruhn, Hla Oad—as well as I know the streets of my own hometown. Ordinarily the early hours of an MMORPG thrive on pure discovery, but riding through Vvardenfell here feels a bit like coming back home after years of absence. My adventures with Eoki and Sun-in-Shadow wisely take me all over it, whether it’s in the Telvanni manors built into the hollows of skyscraper-tall mushrooms or the shadows of a volcanic mountain threatening the surroundings. Those surroundings are beautiful, too, even if they’re crafted in that spindly, overlong style ESO prefers that I’ve never grown accustomed to. The play area of Elder Scrolls Online: Morrowind mirrors the exact dimensions of the original Morrowind, but it far exceeds the original in detail, whether it’s in the lush trappings scattered about a Telvanni mage’s tower or the ornate mosaics lining the walls of the cantons in Vivec City.

With such a strong legacy, Morrowind is the most logical point for a first expansion—there’s little doubt about that, and it’s stuffed with callbacks like the little registration hut in Seyda Neen where The Elder Scrolls III starts off. My time with Eoki and Sun-in-Shadow shows that this isn’t merely an attempt to cash in on nostalgia; the quests I’ve gone on capture the essence of what made Morrowind great without retracing its steps.

Every book, every conversation, every building reveals a reverence for the lore and a keen desire to show this unique fantasy vision at another point in time. So far, it’s an expansion I want to sample to the last drop. Best of all, if you’re totally new to Elder Scrolls Online, you can kick off your adventures with a Morrowind-specific tutorial from the very start and jump into its adventures without having to worry about the core game unless you wish.

Hang in there, Eoki, we’ll get those chains off you yet. Or so I hope.