FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 2014
For more than a decade, Tamriel Rebuilt has been a project dedicated to extending and expanding the game world of Morrowind in a manner consistent with the themes, tones, and back story of the original game - as we have often said, “as Bethesda would have done it.” As a fan project which has grown, changed, and learned as it has gone through the process of developing this content, our understanding of what this means has evolved over the years.
Once, there was a time when Tamriel Rebuilt interpreted our self-imposed mandate to mean including every town in Arena, under such wonderfully inspired names as “Reich Parkeep,” “Karththor Dale” (double th in the original) and “Green Heights.” Once there was a time when Tamriel Rebuilt interpreted our mandate to mean we couldn’t raise land higher than Red Mountain (because it is alleged to be the second highest mountain in Tamriel), that we couldn’t use ash or Sixth House or ancient stronghold assets on the Mainland (because of some throwaway lines of dialogue), and so on.
What we’ve realized, though, is that our commitment to creating this game world “as Bethesda would have done it” requires something much more than scouring every line in every book and dialog topic for tiny statements that we could blow up into strict edicts of fact. What it requires is a commitment to the high caliber of storytelling, world-building, and art that makes Morrowind the game we all love so long after its release. Moreover, we have discovered that some aspects of the original content are actually very limiting on our ability to achieve our goal, and that we must sacrifice strict adherence to the literal content of Morrowind to maintain the integrity of our commitment to the themes, narratives, and lore of Morrowind.
These are mainly aspects of the game which have their origin in its limitations. Surely no one believes that if Morrowind were set in all of Morrowind and not only Vvardenfell, it would have one version of each faction on Vvardenfell and another version off of the island. The quarantine, similarly, is a small line of dialogue in order to justify the player’s inability to leave the island, not some integral narrative element that makes the game what it is. In time, Tamriel Rebuilt will make these small changes for the sake of a better final product.
