The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind
Deconstructed with Jesse Schell's Elemental Tetrad
Many frameworks exist for analyzing the components of a game, from Robin Hunicke’s MDA approach to Aristotle’s Poetics. Today I will be using Jesse Schell’s Elemental Tetrad to analyze my favorite game of all time, The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind.
In his book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Jesse Schell describes the Elemental Tetrad as the four basic elements that comprise every game:
• Story: The sequence of events that unfold in a game. Players have the “freedom” to experience a game’s story through gameplay.
• Aesthetics: How the game looks, sounds, smells, tastes, and feels. Aesthetics have the most direct relationship to a player’s experience and are therefore very important.
• Mechanics: The procedures and rules of the game. Mechanics describe the goal of the game, how players can and cannot achieve it, and what happens when they try. Mechanics are what make a game a game as compared to other forms of entertainment.
• Technology: Any materials and interactions that make the game possible. Jesse Schell divides technology into two parts: foundational and decorational.
It is important to note that none of the elements carry more importance than the others; in fact, each one carries powerful influence over the others. When looking at all four components as whole, it is important to do so with the mindset of what experience they will create for the player. Jesse Schell calls this Holographic Design: as a developer being able to view all elements of a game at once from the perspective of the player.
Morrowind, published by Bethesda Softworks and Ubisoft, was released in 2002 first for PC and then for Microsoft Xbox. The game marks the third installment of The Elder Scrolls (TES) series. The story takes place on the province of Morrowind (hence the name) on the island of Vvardenfell, where the deity Dagoth Ur threatens to drive citizens of the Empire from the region. Enter the player, the hero foretold to unite the Ashlanders and fulfill the prophecy of defeating Dagoth Ur.
Morrowind won over 50 awards including RPG of the Year by GameSpy and Game of the Year by IGN. The game has been complimented as a massive free-world gaming experience to the likes of which had never been seen. Some go as far to say that Morrowind is one of the most important games of all time. Others are not so quick to praise my favorite game, calling it clunky, difficult to follow, and one massive book. Using the Elemental Tetrad, we will analyze why the game was such a success and elaborate more on the reasoning behind the game’s praises and criticisms.
The Story of Morrowind
Jesse Schell details two proven methods for effective story design: The String of Pearls and The Story Machine. The String of Pearls method involves the repetition of non-interactive story followed by free movement. Once the objective of free play is achieved, the pattern continues with more non-interactive story and so on. This method strikes a nice balance between gameplay and storytelling. The Story Machine method occurs when a game generates a series of interesting events that lead players to telling their own stories about events that occured in the game. The designer does not have to author a story in the game for one to take place with the player. These two methods differ in that the Story Machine method favors less pre-scripting on the behalf of the designer in order to encourage more player generated stories, whereas a true String of Pearls approach follows a linear path of pre-scripted story with moments of free play in between.
Morrowind strikes a nice balance between the String of Pearls approach and the Story Machine, but this may not be completely evident to the player. To the player it feels as if the gameplay is completely free, and therefore all Story Machine. This is achieved through the massive open world that the player interacts with, the class customization, and the lack of cinematic cut scenes. The open world gives the sense of freedom to where a player could very well intend to focus entirely on the main quest line, but then get completely sidetracked by a random encounter with an enemy or a nearby dungeon to explore. Even other storylines (side quests) can interfere with the player’s intent to focus on a single task.
Once the player decides on a challenge to take on, that player then has the option to choose how to approach that task. If the goal is to infiltrate an enemy fortress, the player can choose between sneaking in undetected, charging straight ahead and fighting through, or in some instances, using diplomacy to talk their way in. Once a tactic is chosen there are even more choices. If a player chooses to sneak his/her way into the fortress, they can choose to use spells to become invisible, open locked doors, and distract enemies or they can simply use the crouching sneak ability to get by guards and lock picks to break in. This wide variety of options for completing tasks is achieved through character customization. By selecting what skills, abilities, and attributes to nurture, the player is ultimately selecting how he/she wants to approach the many obstacles in the world of Morrowind.
Finally, the lack of cinematic cut scenes make the player feel as if they are in a constant state of ongoing exploration. The gameplay is not ceased by a movie, but rather lines of text containing new information, usually coming from a NPC. To some, this may seem dull (hence the criticism of relating Morrowind to a very large book), to others this enhances the feeling of emersion and gives the player a sense of flow. Flow occurs when a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does.
Morrowind uses both the String of Pearls approach and the Story Machine to tell what is known as the Hero’s Journey. The Hero’s Journey was first theorized by mythologist Joseph Campbell and later broken into twelve components by Hollywood writer Christopher Vogler. The Hero’s Journey, also known as the monomyth, was theorized from the stories of Moses, Buddha, Odysseus, Osiris, and others. The Hero’s Journey has been used in Star Wars, The Matrix, and other Hollywood hits. Let’s look at the story ofMorrowind and how it relates to the monomyth.
A Hero’s Journey
The Lost Prophecies speak of the Incarnate, a reincarnation of the Dunmer hero Nerevar, arriving in Morrowind to rid the land of a dark curse.
To fulfill this prophecy, the Emperor sends an unknown and uncertain imperial courier to the island of Vvardenfell.
Through a series of dangerous and magical quests, this unknown courier is transformed into one of the Empire’s most enduring heroes.
The central story takes place on the province of Morrowind on the island of Vvardenfell, where the deity Dagoth Ur threatens to drive citizens of the Empire from the region. As the hero, you are the reincarnation of Indoril Nerevar referred to as “The Nerevarine,” and it has been prophesized that you will defeat Dagoth Ur. Dagoth Ur plans to use the Heart of Lorkhan to make himself immortal and gain access to an enormously powerful golem. You are first recruited into the Blades, a secret organization charged with protecting the empire. It is in the Blades that the character learns the workings of Morrowind and begins to discover the severity of the task at hand. Through the Blades, the hero becomes familiar with the nomadic tribes of the north, known as the Ashlanders, who predict Nerevar’s incarnate will show himself through the completion of seven prophecies. The player must fulfill these prophecies in order to win over the title of Nerevarine from the Ashlanders and the rest of Morrowind. The Daedric Prince Azura (another deity) guides the player along his quest offering advice and items to help him complete his journey. Upon receiving the title of Nerevarine, the hero has earned the tools and knowledge he needs to defeat Dagoth Ur. There are many tasks and quests between these plot points which help the player unravel the truth of his identity and the history of events leading up to his task.
You may have noticed elements in the first passage above relating to the monomythic stories I mentioned earlier. Words like reincarnation, prophecy, quest, and hero trigger a familiar feeling and instantly we know this will be the story of a hero who rises to the challenge against terrible odds to fulfill his destiny. The following are Vogler’s twelve plot points which may identify a story as a monomyth, along with examples of these points in the story of Morrowind:
- The Ordinary World: Scenes that show our hero is a regular person leading an ordinary life. Hero arrives as a slave into an unsuspecting town.
- The Call to Adventure: The hero is presented with a challenge that disrupts their ordinary life. Hero is recruited by the Blades, a secret organization charged with protecting the empire.
- Refusal of the Call: The hero makes excuses about why he can’t go on the adventure.
- Meeting with the Mentor: Some wise figure gives advice, training, or aid. The leader of the Blades acts as the hero’s first mentor followed by the Daedric prince Azura.
- Crossing the Threshold: The hero leaves the ordinary world (often under pressure) and enters the adventure world. The leader of the Blades sends the hero on numerous quests. Later, the hero must visit the Ashlanders and fulfill the prophecy.
- Tests, Allies, Enemies: The hero faces minor challenges, makes allies, confronts enemies, and learns the workings of the adventure world.
- Approaching the Cave: The hero encounters setbacks and needs to try something new.
- The Ordeal: The hero faces a peak life or death crisis.
- The Reward: The hero survives, overcomes their fear, and gets the reward. The hero overcomes the trials of the Ashland tribes and is unanimously recognized as The Nerevarine.
- The Road Back: The hero returns to the ordinary world, but the problems still aren’t solved. Disease, storms, and peril still threaten the land.
- Resurrection: The hero faces a still greater crisis, and has to use everything he has learned. The hero defeats Dagoth Ur and destroys Lorkhan’s heart.
- Returning with the Elixir: The journey is now well and truly complete, and the hero’s success has improved the lives of everyone in the ordinary world.
It is important to note that a story does not need all twelve components to be considered a monomyth. A story may also repeat sections of the monomyth and arrange them in any order. As I mentioned before, players of Morrowind experience a tremendous amount of freedom. To guide players along its monomythic story, Morrowind uses hidden tactics that Jesse Schell would identify as methods of indirect control.
Indirect control occurs when game designers use constraints, goals, user interface, visual design, characters, and music to guide players along a predetermined path. When analyzing the rest of the Elemental Tetrad we will be sure to analyze how they enact indirect control upon the player.
Aesthetics
Good artwork draws a player into the game and increases the possibility of the player suspending their disbelief, meaning they will not concern themselves with the plausibility of the events unfolding in the game. As a result, the player will more easily engage in flow, a concept we discussed earlier. Good enough artwork also makes the player more forgiving of flaws in other areas of the game. Finally, good artwork can act as an intrinsic reward to the player for playing the game. If this is in fact the case, then the greatest a reward a player can receive upon beating a game is the ability to keep playing it.
Currently, in the year 2014, the graphics of Morrowind are nothing to brag about. Two sequels in The Elder Scrolls series have been released since 2002 containing astoundingly better graphics and environmental physics. It is important to analyze the aesthetics of Morrowind comparing it with other games released during the same era as well as how the aesthetics have contributed to the game’s relevance years later. With that said, upon its release, Morrowind was at the forefront of graphic technology. In fact, Bethesda put the Morrowind project on hold in 1997 until the appropriate technology was developed to support the scale and artwork they were looking for in the game. In 1998 the Direct3D powered engine was released with 32-bit textures and better skeletal animation. This gave Morrowind never before seen character interaction and beautiful water physics.
One drawback to Morrowind’s never before seen scale, were its never before seen loading times. At the game's startup and when transitioning between scenes, the player is met with load times ranging from thirty seconds to two minutes in length. Bethesda took an artistic approach to combating this issue. During these load times the player is presented with slide shows of concept art along with tips and facts to help the player in the game. The concept art showed non-playable characters (NPCs) in various poses, diagrams of different levels, and close up visuals of important in-game artifacts. As a player, I can attest to the interest I held in seeing the NPCs and environments I was interacting with during the game in concept form. It gave me clues of what challenges I may face as the hero.
In his book, The Art of Game Design, Jesse Schell is quick to point out that aesthetics do not comprise solely of visual artwork, but of audio as well. In 2003, Morrowind was nominated for “Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition.” The game did not win the award, but the music of Morrowindcould still be accurately described as “epic.” Upon startup, the player is met with an orchestral soundtrack that builds up to the game's title revealing itself on the home screen. Throughout the rest of the game, the player experiences similar tracks that alternate depending on the player’s status, location, and the time of day. The audio of the game also acts as player cues. For instance, there is a different sound made when a player hits an opponent versus swinging and missing completely. Different sounds indicate when the player has had a spell cast on them, equips armor, breaks a lock pick, and so on. As epic as it is, there are a few criticisms that can be made for the audio of Morrowind. One criticism is that the entire game soundtrack is roughly thirty minutes long. When you couple this fact with the 400+ hours of gameplay, you can see how irritating that might be. Another negative aspect of the game’s audio can be found in the voice acting. With the hundreds of NPCs throughout the game, many voices are recycled. It is also noticeable that they sometimes lack inflection. It is expected that during particular high and low points in the game, the player will experience matching emotion in the voices of NPCs, this was not always the case. Along these same lines, many character faces were repeated as well. It was not uncommon to encounter the same dark elf in two different towns, the only noticeable difference being the character’s clothing.
Most games today contain better graphics than Morrowind, but that has not deterred from the game’s longevity. In fact, Morrowind has attracted quite a large modding community. Thousands of fans build their own levels, items, characters, and quests in order to continue experiencing the magic of the game. Some such mods have been developed to bring the game’s 2001 graphics up to today’s standards. Bethesda made an extremely intelligent decision giving players the keys to the game. The player can enjoy the game long after all the Bethesda designed gameplay has been accomplished. Modding gives the opportunity to expand upon the game’s universe and allows the player to inject his or her own creativity into it. It is a phenomenon that is powerful and long-lived which may one day lead to The Elder Scrolls series becoming a transmedia world.
Morrowind Mechanics
There is some debate as to what defines a mechanic. Jesse describes mechanics simply by stating “they are the interactions and relationships that remain when all of the aesthetics, technology, and story are stripped away.” To put it even more simply, Jesse breaks mechanics down into six main categories:
- Space: Defines the various places that can exist in a game, and how those places are related to one another.
- Objects, Attributes, and States: Objects are anything that can be seen or manipulated (like a race car). Attributes are categories of information about an object (like a race car’s max speed). A state is the current point of an objects attribute (like that race car’s max speed being 190 mph).
- Actions: These are simply the verbs of game mechanics, both the actions a player can take, and the overall strategies that players can pursue.
- Rules: These are the most fundamental mechanic. They make all other mechanics possible and add goals to the game.
- Skill: The real skills that the player must have to play the game.
- Chance: Concerns the interactions between the other five mechanics and deals with some degree of uncertainty.
As you may have noticed, there is a lot of ground to cover in the topic of mechanics, so much so that 15% of Jesse Schell’s book, The Art of Game Design, discusses mechanics even though it is just one chapter out of thirty-two. This paper could be three times its current length and only cover the topic of mechanics inMorrowind. For that reason, we will be taking a high level look of each mechanic with one or two specific examples.
Space: Game spaces generally contain some number of dimensions, have bounded areas, and are either discrete or continuous. When we look at Morrowind, we know that it is a three dimensional game. Players can move up, down, left, right, forwards, and backwards. All objects in the game are rendered with length, breadth, and depth. The island of Vvardenfell itself is surrounded by water which the player can swim in to a point, until they are met with an invisible force field. Each individual dungeon and building is of course bound by walls and a ceiling. That leads us to the last aspect of space in Morrowind, whether it is discrete or continuous. Morrowind space is continuous, with smaller continuous areas nested inside of it. Continuous means that the only boundaries for gameplay surround the entire area itself. The game is not broken up into several smaller play areas linked together in some sort of linear fashion. Morrowind is big and the player can go wherever he or she chooses within the bounded island of Vvardenfell.
Objects, Attributes, and States: Jesse defines an object as anything that can be seen or manipulated in a game. Morrowind is loaded with objects! Weapons, animals, enemies, doors, ghosts, food, the list goes on. Each of these objects has at least one attribute. Morrowind weapons for example have minimum and maximum damages for when the player slashes, chops, and thrusts. The states of these attributes are the different values in the minimum and maximum fields. Morrowindgoes even further to tie the states of a weapon's minimum and maximum damage to the attributes of the player himself. A player with a higher proficiency in short swords will have higher maximum damage with a knife as opposed to a player who is only skilled in blunt weapons. This acts as a nice tangible reward for players as they progress through the game.
Actions: Actions are divided into two categories: operative actions and resultant actions. Operative actions are the base actions a player can take. Some operative actions in Morrowind include: Walk, Levitate, Block, Close Object, Take Item, Run, Ready Weapon, Sheath Weapon, Rest, Drop Item, and so on.
Resultant actions are only meaningful in the larger picture of the game and they have to do with how a player is using operative actions to achieve a goal. These types of actions emerge naturally as the game is played. In Morrowind, a player may end up crafting their own legendary set of armor in order to gain an advantage over the NPCs. To accomplish this resultant action, the player needs to find the equipment that he wants to enchant either from bartering or looting, the player then needs to learn the enchantments that he wants to use and gain high enough proficiency to use those enchantments, next the player needs soul gems to cast the enchantment (everybody knows that), then the player is able to build their legendary armor. This type of gameplay, known as emergent gameplay, occurs throughout Morrowind. The player sets their own goals in the game in order to improve the overall experience.
Rules: There are various types of rules which differ in scope and function in video games. The overall goal of the game is a type of rule for instance. The overall goal of Morrowind is to fulfill the prophecy as the Nerevarine and defeat Dagoth Ur in order to restore peace in the land. Several smaller goals/rules exist in that framework which are the quests that make up the entire story. Other rules govern how exactly a player plays the game, these are knows as operational rules. An operational rule may govern how a player increases their proficiency in fighting with a long sword: a player increases from level 16 to level 17 with a long sword in Morrowind by dealing 500 damage with that weapon. Other rules, known as behavioral rules, govern the implicit rules of gameplay. These rules are not formally policed by any governing body, just socially frowned upon to disobey. An example of a behavioral rule in Morrowind may be against killing all of the shop owners in the game. This is a bad habit because 1) the shop owner is typically seen as a non-violent person just trying to make an honest living and 2) if you kill all of the shop owners, you won't have anywhere to sell the goods you loot.
Skill: When most people think of skill in video games, they think of character skills. Character skills increase as the character gains levels. When we look at skill as a mechanic, we are looking at the skill of the player himself. Player skills are divided into three categories: physical skills, mental skills, and social skills. To play Morrowind, the player has to effectively manipulate a controller (physical skill). The player in Morrowind is constantly making decisions, which is a mental skill. Decisions inMorrowind involve how to approach a particular quest, whether to sell an item or drop it, whether to try and bribe someone to get them to do what you want or intimidate them. It can be argued that social skill is involved in Morrowind because the player interacts with characters in the game and ultimately makes them their friend or enemy. I would argue that Morrowind does not require social skills, and that the skills inferred are in fact mental skills because the player has to figure out how to effectively navigate the attributes of a NPC, not interact with another player.
Chance: Chance in video games is synonymous with probability and it concerns interactions between all other game mechanics. When you hear the word probability, your brain automatically turns to mathematics, which is precisely correct. Chance is everywhere in Morrowind in part because of the game’s genre as a role-playing game (RPG). Many video game RPGs originated as fantasy tabletop role-playing games, like the game Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) for instance. In Dungeons and Dragons, players create their own characters, assigning different point values on character attributes and embark upon a fantasy adventure. Whenever the player encounters an event in D&D, there is a roll of the dice which acts as a multiplier on the character’s attributes in order to determine the outcome of that event. This type of gameplay is essentially the same in Morrowind just more visual and the dice roll taking place behind the scenes. Character proficiency in different skill areas act as the attributes which are affected by the roll of the dice. These dice rolls determine a player’s chance on landing an attack, how much damage that attack will do, whether or not a particular spell will cast successfully, the difficulty in picking the lock on a door, and so on. While chance inMorrowind is fair, it can be a source of frustration early on as a low level character who can’t land any hits. The fighting feels a little repetitive because of this system, which I will dive into later.
Technology
Jesse describes technology as being the most dynamic, most volatile, and most unpredictable of the four elements in the Elemental Tetrad. He says this because technology is ever changing without any indication of how new forms of it will be received by the public. It is very easy to get caught up in the hype of technology with promises of it creating a grand future. With Jesse’s observations in mind, it is easy to see how Bethesda took a bit of a risk with Morrowind:
- Bethesda waited for a new technology to be released which could supposedly handle the game’s massive scale before continuing work on Morrowind. The Direct3D engine proved a worthwhile investment as it is now the base for vector graphics on all of Microsoft’s consoles.
- Microsoft’s Xbox was released in 2001, just one year before Morrowind, and it was the first video game console offered by an American company since the Atari Jaguar in 1996.
- With a new technology come a new audience and its preferences. It was a wonder as to if console gamers would even enjoy RPGs as much as computer gamers. An RPG of its scale had not yet been brought to console.
- Morrowind became a massive investment due to the game’s scale and new technology. Bethesda had to triple its staff in the first year of development.
The investment in Microsoft’s technology, both Direct3D and the Xbox, proved worthwhile and profitable. The Xbox was initially seen as direct competition to Nintendo’s Gamecube, Sony’s Playstation 2, and Sega’s Dreamcast. With 24 million units sold by 2006, the Xbox soon found its only major rival to be the Sony Playstation 2. Bethesda’s success with Microsoft has led to the continuation of The Elder Scrollsseries (Oblivion, Skyrim) on Microsoft consoles to come (Xbox 360, Xbox One). In retrospect, aside from gaming computers, the Xbox was the only system powerful enough to run Morrowind at the time.
The risk of finding out if console gamers enjoyed immersive RPGs was very real, and Bethesda did end up learning a few things about their new audience. RPGs like Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights, which were adaptations of the popular board game Dungeons and Dragons, traditionally utilized turn-based combat. Console players are used to a lot of action in their gameplay, to where turn-based games are almost frowned upon. While Morrowind did not use turn-based combat, it did receive criticism in its combat calling it “one-button fighting.” In the game when a player swings their weapon at a NPC, a calculation is made to decide whether or not that swing will hit the other player. The weapon swing is essentially a dice roll where the odds of hitting can be improved or reduced depending on the player’s skill proficiency with the weapon being used, the player’s accuracy level, the player’s overall level, the NPC’s overall level, and so on. The player is forced to continuously press a single button until they’re rewarded with a blow to the other character. This tactic is repeated until the NPC is defeated. You can see how this would be perceived as “one-button fighting.” Bethesda has since modified the fighting mechanic in its TES series to much praise.
With Bethesda tripling its staff, the team spent its entire first year on just the construction set for Morrowind. The construction set is the piece I mentioned earlier which gives the player the ability to mod the game. This construction set became a piece of technology in itself being defined as a “role-playing operating system.” As I mentioned in the section on aesthetics, the construction set allows players to explore their creativity in the world of Morrowind. One player has gone as far as spending seven years on a single mod of Morrowindto create a new town called Ravenhold, complete with new scenery, quests, characters, and items.
Conclusion
The Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind sold over 4 million copies from its release to 2012. The title has received over fifty awards, and is still relevant thanks in part because of a thriving modding community. Some consider the game to be one of the most important of all time and think it the best in The Elder Scrolls series even though two games have come after it. When using Jesse Schell’s Elemental Tetrad, we were able to see some of the reasons for the game’s overall success:
- Story: The story of Morrowind closely followed that of the Hero’s Journey, a pattern that has proven successful for Star Wars, The Matrix, and other franchises.
- Aesthetics: Morrowind’s graphics represented the peak of video game technology at the time of its release; this coupled with an epic soundtrack created a beautiful experience the player could immerse themselves in.
- Mechanics: The game’s mechanics featured a wide open world to explore, customizable characters, a large amount of resultant actions for players to set their sights on, and a new age spin on a proven skill/chance architecture.
- Technology: Bethesda took a gamble on Morrowind by betting the game’s success on new technology, the Microsoft Xbox and the Direct3D engine. Bethesda won out and secured the success of TES for years to come.
A point stressed in The Art of Game Design is the achievement of balance. Balance can be broken down into several categories such as overall fairness, challenge vs success, punishment, rewards, and more.Morrowind strikes a balance in giving the player a plethora of meaningful choices presented in a way that is not overwhelming. Some criticize the text based dialogue system of Morrowind, however I see it as an opportunity to clearly lay out the choices a player has in front of them so that they can make the best in-game decisions possible. This is also an elegant way of providing an extreme amount of detail, while still leaving enough room for the player to imagine any missing components of character interaction. Bethesda also facilitates imagination through the construction set that comes with Morrowind, a tool that has had some involved in modding Morrowind projects for several years. The mastery of the four elements of the Elemental Tetrad, ultimately achieving balance, is why Morrowind is still my favorite game today.
