The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Accidental Innuendo: At the beginning of the (short but existent) Forced Tutorial, a guard approaches and tells you, "This is where you get off. Come with me."
  • Alternate Character Interpretation: A big part in Morrowind. To some people, the Tribunal murdered Nerevar, and in a later work Vivec sort-of confessed to the crime, while Dagoth Ur was actually just trying to help.
  • Awesome Music: Nothing less than the title music. For a game as epically large as Morrowind is, the music is suitably awesome. Considering who wrote it, it's not surprising that it turns the awesome of the game way, way up. Though credit where credit is due: the melody was done by Eric Heberling for Daggerfall, as noted in the Recurring Riff entry on the main page.
  • Broken Base: Morrowind is the most divisive game in the franchise. Many Morrowind fans did not like Oblivion or Daggerfall and vice-versa.
  • Complete Monster: Almalexia.
  • Crazy Awesome: Divayth Fyr is considered this by most Morrowind fans, due to him being a 4,000 year old wizard, collector of Dwemer artifacts, and slightly crazy genius who surrounds himself with opposite-sex clone wife/daughters, diseased zombie-esque maniacs and the last living dwarf.
  • Draco in Leather Pants: Almalexia.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse:
    • Jiub. His badass appearance, the fact that he is the first character players encounter, the fact that he is a fellow prison-ship prisoner along with the player, and his friendliness all make him very popular with fans, despite only having a few lines before being put on a boat. There are a few mods that bring him back and add quests centered around him. In the next game Oblivion, there is a mention of him having become a saint after ridding Vvardenfell of all Cliff Racers. And then being killed by the Daedra.
    • Though his creepy sexual dialogue will definitely Squick out some players, Crassius' easily one of the most memorable characters in the game. The play he writes even appears in future installments of the series.
  • Game Breaker:
    • Players can brew potions. These potions are more effective depending on how high the player's Intelligence stat is. However, it is possible to brew Intelligence-enhancing potions with dirt-common ingredients. The Intelligence buff you get from that can then be used to brew even more powerful Intelligence potions, which can be used to brew yet more powerful Intelligence-enhancing potions. This can go on as long as you have enough ingredients (and as noted, the ingredients are very common). When your Intelligence stat has reached the desired level of godliness, go ahead and brew whatever over-powered mega-potions you want: from Restore Health 9999 Points on Self for 9999999 seconds to 100% Sanctuary on self for 999999 seconds to Immunity to Magicka/Frost/Fire/Shock/Poison/Normal Weapons on Self for 99999 seconds. Creating a potion of Fortify Agility will mean enemies will always miss and you will always hit, although you can still be hit by magic.
    • The Corprus Disease. The effects of the disease boost your strength and endurance, but drains a host of other attributes. Both gains and losses from this are cumulative over time, meaning that if you go to sleep for a year, you'll have 0 in the drained attributes, but a strength and endurance in the hundreds. When you finish the relevant quest, only the drain is removed.
  • Goddamned Bats: Cliff racers, perhaps the most annoying foes in video game history. They make an irritating sound, do little damage, make you flinch when they hit you, drop crappy loot, and come in flocks of three to ten. And once they see you, they won't stop following you unless they get stuck in a tree. They haven't figured out doorknobs, but if you go in a door with some following you, they'll be waiting for you when you come back out. And since they fly, they can swoop down to annoy you from any angle. And their hit detection leaves a lot to be desired.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks: Prior to Oblivion coming out, it was Morrowind that was considered to be "the symbol of all the bad trends in the industry." And mostly for the alleged reason of "dumbing down" for console players. Ironically since then, it is now considered the last good Elder Scrolls game by the same crowd.
  • It Was His Sled: Is there anyone who doesn't know that the player is the reincarnation of Nerevar these days?
  • Magnificent Bastard: Azura and Hlaalu Helseth.
  • Memetic Molester: Crassius Curio, and for good reason.
  • Memetic Mutation: Game of the Year, All Years.
  • Most Annoying Sound:
    • The guards at Vivec are watching you, scum, and will remind you of the fact whenever you're within hearing distance.
    • When you're escorting the wisewoman... "hey, wait for me. Hey, wait for me. Hey, wait for me. Hey, wait for me. Hey, wait for me. Hey, wait for me! hey, wait for me!". This easily puts her on the same level as the guards shouting "HALT! HALT! HALT! HALT! HALT! HALT!" in Daggerfall....
  • Rooting for the Empire:
    • Some fans see Dagoth Ur as a misunderstood good guy who just wants to free his people from the exploitative foreign Empire. It helps that a huge chunk of his Backstory is about how he was betrayed by his supposedly-good best friend. Mind you, this was after Dagoth decided he wanted to use the artifacts of doom he and Nerevar initially set out to the destroy for personal power.
    • Rooting for Almalexia is a whole another case, rarer but still happens.
  • Sacred Cow: Noting the It's Popular, Now It Sucks example above, nowadays Morrowind is considered as this.
  • The Scrappy: Fargoth. Best not to say any more.
  • Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Tribunal met poor critical response because it was largely a dungeon crawl in an open world exploration based game (though it does add some much needed scripting functions for mods). Bloodmoon instead ops to add a new island to explore.
  • Special Effects Failure: On some ATI video cards, the sun is a black hole.
  • Squick:
    • The silt strider is a gigantic arthropod used as a means of public transport throughout Vvardenfell. A bit odd so far, but not too out of place for the setting. However, in order to allow for passengers, cargo and of course the driver, parts of the creature's shell are hollowed out. The driver then controls the strider by DIRECTLY MANIPULATING THE CREATURE'S INTERNAL ORGANS.
    • Everything dear old Uncle Crassis says, sweetie.
  • That One Boss:
    • Gaenor. He reflects almost all damage from magic spells and mundane weapons due to having an insanely high leveled Luck. And no, there is not a puzzle to get around it. You just have to have a hell of a lot of Hit Points while you pummel this heavily-armored highly-agile guy until he falls over and dies. He starts as an NPC, but if you speak to him for any reason, he'll eventually come back in armor. Fortunately, he's still easy to avoid. Like most of the annoying parts of Morrowind, he appears in Tribunal.
    • The final boss of the Imperial Legion questline counts as well, mainly because he uses both an Infinity+1 Sword and Infinity Plus One Armor. That you just delivered to him.
  • Uncanny Valley:
    • In audio form. In various Sixth House enclaves, shrines and lairs there's a set of bells that they player can ring. There's something wrong and unsettling about the noise they produce, and none of the notes sound good together.
    • Argonians and Khajiits walk like they broke their ankles. Everyone else walks like they have a stick up their ass (a pretty blazin' stick though). Not to mention... their jaws flap in a really erally weird way when they talk...
  • What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic: The 36 Lessons of Vivec. They are a series of 36 books, supposedly penned by the man-god himself, which are written by Michael Kirkbride. In them, he uses oodles of biblical imagery to make sure that, if you take it seriously, there is NO WAY a person could see Vivec as anything less than the absolute god of The Elder Scrolls universe (which, of course, isn't necessarily true). Doubles with Anvilicious, Tropes Are Not Bad and Getting Crap Past the Radar with a sprinkling of In-Joke.
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