T w e n t y S i d e d

Morrowind and Oblivion drew their storytelling cues from media besides videogames, because that is, by and large, what videogames do. It’s too hard for most games with ambitions of epic scope and narrative content to convey these elements entirely through gameplay; they instead use gameplay as an aid to transport players into storytelling grounded in traditional methods. Which, with roleplaying videogames, is generally what the player wants: to have a story that could be a book or a movie improved by interactivity. And that’s just the point where RPG fans get into the biggest slap-fightiest arguments: book or movie.

Morrowind was literary; it told its story through context and history and shovelfuls of dialogue. most of the story happened when you were standing still somewhere reading something. Oblivion was cinematic–an active, moving, speaking story in which you were the primary character–and it sacrificed a lot to get there.

It had voice-acting for all its dialogue, which forced a thousand compromises from shortening dialogue length to limiting dialogue scope to homogenizing the voices for various races and characters. It seized control of the player to allow cutscenes to occur uninterrupted. It filled a large portion of its campaign with rinse-and-repeat prefab dungeons to allow the other missions the maximum scripting and dialogue budget. Not all of the cuts were logistical, either; some of them were more abstract and philosophical. For example, the increased value and vitality of actors (plus a few other technical reasons not worth getting into yet) meant the developers put stricter regulations on who could be killed. Any NPC who would become relevant to a quest was invincible until they had discharged a necessary portion of their scripting. Technically neither of the first two games gave you leeway to kill random people either, quite possibly for engine reasons, but Morrowind was so bold in making everyone killable that it didn’t seem the developers would retract the privilege. It seems fair, doesn’t it? Your input in the game is very limited. You can’t arrest NPCs, be meaningfully rude to them, spread gossip about them, ask them to stay away from you, fire them if they’re part of your guild, or give them wet willies. Your choices for expressing your opinion on or judgment of an NPC amount to murdering them or not murdering them, and taking away the choice of murdering them is nontrivial. It feels like a fussy exercise of power–a storyteller convinced whatever they’ve got planned is much better than what you’re trying to come up with.

All these cuts and constraints could have easily amounted to a net loss for the franchise. In the eyes of some, they certainly do. But it’s also fair to say that as long as Bethesda was trying to make the best of their scripting and create a broad adventuring simulator, they did a pretty good job of it. It all came down to working with their limitations.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 11: Song and Dance”

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