You can really tell it was and still is being written by bigoted WASPs. Aside from the obvious monarchism and the Empire being portrayed unilaterally as “The Good Guys” (at least until Skyrim), I’ve noticed for a long time that the backstory is riddled with genocides and ethnic cleansings.

Almost always human on elf (the inhuman other), and almost always treated like a good thing. Usually it’s the noble and physically superior Nords who just so happen to be blonde haired, blue eyed vikings. And when it’s not them, it’s the psychotic child killing robot man Pelinal Whitestrake or Tiber Septim using a time bending superweapon to annihilate thousands of Altmer for the crime of checks notes successfully defending themselves from his Imperialist bullshit. I think it’s insulting that the victims of what can only be described as oppression are now painted as the Nazi-esque villains because the alternative would be making them way too sympathetic. That’s not even getting into how they treat the Orcs and the Beast races.

We talk about how guys like Tolkien and CS Lewis wrote a lot of racist undertones, and then Bethesda says “Fuck that” and just makes the ethnonationalism a plot point in all their games.

  • @thervingi
    7•2 years ago

    I don’t think the Empire is portrayed in a positive light in Morrowind. At least that wasn’t my impression when I played it years ago.

    • FossilPoet
      4•2 years ago

      There’s a lot more nuance in Morrowind to start. They were portrayed as good, bad, or neutral depending on who you engaged. You were allowed to form your own opinion on them, something Bethesda has always tried to cultivate even to the detriment of quality of writing down the road.

      Keep in mind also that in the main story of Morrowind, it was the Emperor who sent you to fulfill the Nerevarine prophecies and you were ultimately working for the Blades. It’s equivalent to the role of Agent Ross in Black Panther, who fulfilled “white savior” a few times. You are a non-native foreigner in the game effectively working for the CIA. You can roleplay in your head a detachment from this after becoming the Nerevarine, but the game itself doesn’t give you the ability to, for instance, stage a playable and possibly canon insurrection to drive the invaders out of the Ashlander’s homeland. The best you get is killing all the Blades and Imperial agents for fun.

      Sidenote: the Emperor even only pardoned you and sent you to Vvardenfell because his oracles and scholars told him that you might be the Nerevarine. It was all along a thing of “the West knows best.”

      EDIT: Thinking deeper on the inability to stage an Ashlander insurrection, specifically two points:

      1. You get to participate in a civil war in Skyrim, but it is of course the racist ass ethnonationalist Stormcloaks. I can’t even look at Elder Scrolls memes anymore because that shit inspired endless fascism, alongside the way the ES community uses “n’wah” in place of the n-word (and mods in those spaces won’t do shit about it). The ES community is, at its core, racist, and Bethesda caters to that hardcore.

      2. Technically, the only reason the Empire is even in Morrowind is because the Tribunal was weakening and so they signed the Treaty of the Armistice with Tiber Septim to join the Empire. Great man bullshit handwaved an entire people’s destiny away, the Tribunal lying to the people and brutally criminalizing all dissent or investigation into the matter “because their literal faith in us is what keeps Morrowind safe so we must look powerful.” Vvardenfell was still restricted from Imperial trade and settlement until 13 years before the events of Morrowind, King Llethan having changed that, but he was himself a vassal to the Emperor. The decision was likely influenced by both parties to the Armistice yet again to the ire of the locals and natives, without giving them any information into the matter. The lore community even takes a perspective that the average character doesn’t know shit (re: “How much does the average person in Tamriel know about metaphysical lore concepts?”), namely “because that’s how it works in real life” (but they often lack any explanation or analysis of this beyond that and in fact mock it, as seen in the FAQ). It reinforces that it’s useless for them to be aware of the shit affecting their daily lives or have any agency at all.

      The Ashlanders were ironically as hateful and regressive as the more traditionalist Nords, but they had a much better case for breaking ties violently.