Trivia / The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

• Breakthrough Hit: Morrowind was the first mainstream hit for Bethesda Softworks.
• Cult Classic: Although a hit when it was first released, Morrowind was eventually eclipsed by its sequels in popular eyes (arriving at Stage 6a of the Fandom Life Cycle). Nonetheless, it is still actively played and modded by a fiercely dedicated and very militant fandom core to this day.
• Dummied Out: Naturally, there are a few things that had to be left out with a game this large.
  • The Blight was originally going to be an expanding threat over time, but had to be left out due to technological limitations
  • Exploration of the Construction Set files reveals several quests that were cut from the game with no real explanation.
    • Hrundi of the Fighter's Guild had a quest for the player to eliminate a lesser Dagoth that didn't make it into the final game.
    • An early Imperial Legion quest has the player rescuing an Orc tax collector from a reclusive Telvanni mage. Another quest was going to have the player actually collect the taxes.
    • Another Legion quest has you searching for a specific set of Dwemer blueprints, but was removed.
    • Two quests, one for House Telvanni and one for the Morag Tong, sent the player to "forcefully retire" Master Neloth. Perhaps they already knew that Neloth would be appearing in a later game in the series?
    • One Thieves Guild quest had the player stealing a mission report from the Ordinators, but was removed.
    • In true Bethesda fashion, there is a quest which was only partly removed, potentially causing issues: There was going to be a Legion quest to acquire the plans to Anumidium. The dialogue to acquire the quest is properly blocked off, and the journal entries can't trigger... but the completion of the quest is only partly removed, so if you bring the plans to the general who would have given you the mission and speak to him about Anumidium you block off the rest of his quests.
  • There are several items and objects in the game that seem like they should have a purpose, but do not. Many were likely intended for use in a quest that never made it into the game. For example:
    • There is an alchemy ingredient called "bloat," which can be purchased from merchants or found in random crates. Where bloat comes from is never explained in-game—-but the level editor reveals an unused "bloat spore" plant that was supposed to produce them, but was never placed in-game. Several mods out there deal with this, ranging from placing them in several swampy areas to working them into a House Telvanni quest line as being in a bloat mine.
    • To defeat the Dagoth Ur, players need two special weapons called Sunder and Keening, which are being guarded by the Dagoth Ur's higher-ranked minions. The data files of the game reveal a phony look-alike of Sunder, and a voice file for the Dagoth Ur taunting you when you try to kill him with it. These were never included in-game.
    • "The Wings of the Queen of Bats", Morrowind's Infinity Plus One Axe, isn't actually in the game, but can be obtained through cheat codes or modding the game.
    • Morrowind also has a version of Azura's Star that can be used as a shuriken, but the final game replaces it with a Soul Gem.
  • There is a faction in the game files called "Imperial Knights", complete with full rank progression (this isn't actually necessary for a faction to have) and relations to other factions. What it doesn't have is any members or ways of joining it.
• Feelies: Comes with a full-color map of Vvardenfell done in the style of an in-universe cartographer. Both expansions, Tribunal and Bloodmoon, likewise come with similar maps of Mournhold and Solstheim, respectively. The Game of the Year edition comes with all of these.
• Genre Popularizer: When it was released, Morrowind was one of the first major Western RPGs to receive a Multi-Platform release, bringing it to console as well as PC. This helped to bring the genre to a much wider audience after decades of being a mostly PC exclusive.
• God Does Not Own This World:
  • Julian LeFay, who had played a big part in creating The Elder Scroll series and had spearheaded the development of both The Elder Scrolls: Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, as well as the spin-off Battlespire, was not picked as a part of the initial development team for the game, something that evidently disappointed him greatly and, combined with concerns over the company's changing culture, prompted him to resign from Bethesda, citing Creative Differences. At the personal request of Christopher Weaver, the founder of Bethesda and his personal friend, LeFay eventually did some consulting work on the game, but it was only tangential and he has not been involved with any Elder Scroll title since.
  • Downplayed with Ted Peterson, who was the main writer and designer on Arena and Daggerfall. While he still contributed quite a bit of writing to the game, he was not chosen as a staff writer, but was rather hired on as a subcontractor as he had left Bethesda after the release of Daggerfall.
• Killer App: This game was one for the Xbox for those who didn't buy one for Halo: Combat Evolved, being one of the first then-modern Western RPGs available on a console.
• Multi-Platform: For both Xbox and PC, making it the first game in the series to be multi-platform. This allowed the game to get into the hands of a wider audience, helping make it a Breakthrough Hit for Bethesda and introduce a massive Newbie Boom.
• Newbie Boom: The six-year gap between Daggerfall and Morrowind meant that Morrowind was the first game in The Elder Scrolls series for many fans. Morrowind was both a critical and commercial success, as well as one of the first major Western RPGs to be released on consoles, establishing the fanbase that would go on to make Oblivion and Skyrim even bigger hits.
• Schedule Slip: A letter packaged with An Elder Scrolls Legend: Battlespire promises Morrowind will be released around late 1998.
• Sequel Gap: The six-year gap between Daggerfall and Morrowind was the longest between games in the main series, prior to being overtaken by the decade-plus gap between Skyrim and VI.
• Urban Legend of Zelda: There were supposedly a number of ways to join Dagoth Ur and/or the Sixth House, most of which were debunked rather quickly. As you can see in the below entry, this one was almost a real part of the game...
• What Could Have Been:
  • The blight was to originally be an expanding threat, but technical limitations axed the idea.
  • According to some code snippets remaining in the game and hints-but-not-quite confirmations by game developers, it appears that joining Dagoth Ur was originally going to be an option but was cut relatively early in the process.
  • In very early planning, the game was called Tribunal and would have taken place in the Summerset Isles, homeland of the Altmer. Some preliminary artwork including cover art were produced in 1996 after Daggerfall's completion.
  • Original plans for the game had it taking place within the entire province of Morrowind, rather than just the island of Vvardenfell. The decision to also release the game for Xbox purportedly was the main reason for this, as the console probably couldn't have rendered that large a world. Notably, the ambitious mod project Tamriel Rebuilt is an attempt at actually realising this idea.
  • There were plans for the game to feature every major Great House in Morrowind involved in a Mêlée à Trois against each other, with the Player Character eventually being asked to put an end to the conflict by allying with one of the houses and bring it to victory over the others. This idea would be scrapped in the early development phase.
  • There were originally plans for not one, but two quests to kill Neloth (one from House Telvanni and the other being a Grandmaster Writ from the Morag Tong). Given that both appear to have gotten rather far along, it seems that he was given a reprieve, as opposed to having said quests cut for time.
• Word of God: Or Word of Dante/Word of Saint Paul, depending on how "canon" you consider the works to be. Some of the game developers have posted "obscure texts" on the official forums regarding a number of in-game topics and characters. They are generally regarded by the fandom as, at least, Loose Canon. Michael Kirkbride, in particular, wrote a number of them which fill in gaps around The Tribunal, Vivec, and the Dwemer. (Kirkbride is also the author of many of the in-game books, including most-famously the 36 Lessons of Vivec series.)

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