Pratama Wirya Atmaja, Andreas Nugroho Sihananto, and M. Afdal Susilo Aji (University of Pembangunan Nasional “Veteran” Jawa Timur, Indonesia)
Morrowind, the third main title in The Elder Scrolls series, is widely regarded as one of the finest role-playing games, not least due to its complex, high-fantasy medieval world (Browne 2018). One key factor of this complexity is the depiction of centuries-old East-West cultural contact between the Rome-like Cyrodillic Empire and the eclectically eastern Morrowind nation of Dunmers or Dark Elves.
Rather than the entirety of Morrowind, the game is set in Vvardenfell, a large volcanic island at the center of the nation (“Guide to Vvardenfell” n.d.). As seen in Figures 1 to 3, many places on the island differ significantly due to the coexistence of the Empire’s Western culture and the native Dunmeri culture (Sierra 2020). First, Caldera, with its Medieval European buildings and Roman Legionaries-like guards, is an example of an unmistakably Imperial town on Vvardenfell (“Lore:Caldera” n.d.). Conversely, Ald’ruhn’s crab-like buildings and bone-clad guards immediately reveal the city’s native Dunmeri culture (“Guide to Ald’ruhn” n.d.). In the middle of the cultural spectrum rests the city of Balmora, hosting buildings and lifestyles acceptable to both Dunmers and Westerners (“Guide to Balmora” n.d.).
Among the intangible aspects of Vvardenfell’s society are two religions with long histories. On the one hand, the Tribunal Temple represents a native worship of three living Dunmeri “gods” (“Lore:Tribunal Temple” n.d.). On the other hand, the Imperial Cult of the Divines is an imported religion from the Empire (“For My Gods and Emperor” n.d.). Together, they dictate how most Westerners and native Dunmers in Vvardenfell view the world around them.
How does this seemingly complex cultural contact compare to East-West interactions between historical cultures? We set out to answer this question by employing Berry’s acculturation model (1997) and Auerbach’s narrative reconciliation pyramid (2009) to compare the contact with the historical one between Egypt and the Greco-Roman world. The acculturation model allowed us to determine the degree of cultural contact: marginalization, segregation, assimilation, or integration. Meanwhile, we used the pyramid to determine how deeply the native Dunmers and the Westerners had reconciled their “master narratives,” as indicated by the relationship between their faiths. Lastly, we also tried to make sure that the two contacts were of comparable lengths of time.
We find that in the game’s world, Morrowind’s occupation by the Cyrodillic Empire has lasted for more than four centuries, from the Third Era’s year 1 to year 427 (“Third Era Timeline” n.d.), making their contact comparable length-wise to Roman Egypt, from the time of Julius Caesar to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Moreover, Morrowind has interacted with Westerners since at least its surrender to the older Reman Empire some 800 years earlier (“First Era Timeline” n.d.), allowing us to stretch the comparison to the Ptolemaic dynasty or even further back. This millennium-long contact should, in theory, have led to cultural integration that is comparable to or even surpasses that within the Greco-Roman-Egyptian world.
In practice, the West-Morrowind contact has been far less disruptive. Firstly, the Empire’s culture has merely been segregated within the native Morrowind culture in Vvardenfell. Although there is visible intercultural interaction in places like Balmora, it is shallow since we can easily separate the place’s Dunmeri culture from its Western culture. In contrast with Roman Egypt (Vandorpe 2012), even a Dunmer adopting a Western name or vice versa, an ethnically Western person with a traditional Dunmeri name seems unheard of in Vvardenfell. Likewise, interfaith relationships within the island’s society have equally been one-dimensional: the Temple and the Imperial Cult have mostly been opposites, and there is no trace of syncretic religions in the vein of the Greco-Egyptian cult of Serapis (Mckechnie and Guillaume 2008), such as one amalgamating the Divines with the Temple’s saints. Even in the face of a common threat from House Dagoth and their dreaded Blight (“Lore:Dagoth Ur” n.d.), the master narratives of the Westerners and native Dunmers do not seem to have reconciled much.
In conclusion, despite their increasing legitimacy, it seems that games still tend to present complex issues like cultural contact superficially, something that game developers and researchers should consider rectifying. On the other hand, we have based our assessment on only Morrowind, limiting its generalizability. Thus, future research should explore more games with complex worlds to confirm or question our findings.
References
Auerbach, Yehudith. 2009. “The Reconciliation Pyramid-A Narrative-Based Framework for Analyzing Identity Conflicts.” Political Psychology 30 (2): 291–318. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00692.x.
Berry, John W. 1997. “Immigration, Acculturation, and Adaptation.” Applied Psychology 46 (1): 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1464-0597.1997.tb01087.x.
Browne, Jordan. 2018. “Narrative Mechanics: World-Building through Interaction.” Facta Ficta, Journal of Narrative, Theory & Media 2 (2): 35–50. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3515076.
“First Era Timeline.” n.d. The Imperial Library. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.imperial-library.info/content/first-era.
“For My Gods and Emperor.” n.d. The Imperial Library. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.imperial-library.info/content/my-gods-and-emperor.
“Guide to Ald’ruhn.” n.d. The Imperial Library. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.imperial-library.info/content/guide-aldruhn.
“Guide to Balmora.” n.d. The Imperial Library. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.imperial-library.info/content/guide-balmora.
“Guide to Vvardenfell.” n.d. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP). Accessed June 1, 2024. https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Guide_to_Vvardenfell.
“Lore:Caldera.” n.d. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP). Accessed June 1, 2024. https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Caldera.
“Lore:Dagoth Ur.” n.d. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP). Accessed June 1, 2024. https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Dagoth_Ur.
“Lore:Tribunal Temple.” n.d. The Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (UESP). Accessed June 1, 2024. https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Tribunal_Temple.
Mckechnie, Paul, and Philippe Guillaume. 2008. “Section Epsilon. And With Zeus Make End, Ye Muses.” In Ptolemy II Philadelphus and His World, 273–408. BRILL. https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004170896.i-488.34.
Sierra, Wendi. 2020. “Big and Crazy and Cool: World Style in Elder Scrolls Games.” In Todd Howard: Worldbuilding in Tamriel and Beyond, 75–104. Bloomsbury Publishing.
“Third Era Timeline.” n.d. The Imperial Library. Accessed June 2, 2024. https://www.imperial-library.info/content/third-era.
Vandorpe, Katelijn. 2012. “Identity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt, 260–76. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199571451.013.0017.
Thank you for this great opening paper for the ‘Culture, Chronology and Fantasy’ panel! I was wondering about how ideas about East-West interaction compare between the overarching lore narratives and the player interactions with NPCs and places in their gameplay? For example, does that nuance of those broader ideas get reflected in the little details like NPC conversations or is it lost to more generic fantasy scripts?
Thanks, Tess, great question! Unfortunately, we find the gameplay also tends to depict the contact shallowly. For example, it is very easy to distinguish an NPC’s race by their racially stereotypical greetings; there’s no ambiguity here. Similarly, although the Tribunal Temple and the Imperial Cult aim for practically the same social goals (such as giving food to poor citizens), there are no quests or events for such goals where the player acts as the agent for both factions, either explicitly or implicitly.
How much do you think the reification of culture into extremely distinct species-race archetypes in a setting like The Elder Scrolls hampers any attempt to show cross-cultural contact?
An interesting comparison might be Baldur’s Gate in BG1 and BG3, where there clearly is a wide variety of archetypes but in a much more multicultural-cosmopolitan framework: but again, I think syncretism in its true sense is rare. Another key difficulty for this in fantasy is the use of religions where the gods explicitly do exist, making it much less logical to form syncretic belief systems in that area.
Thanks, these are intriguing questions; we considered some of them but didn’t discuss them in the paper due to the length constraint.
Yes, we think that the tendency of games to provide strong and visible racial stereotypes directly hampers more nuanced depictions of cultural contacts. However, we think this tendency stemmed from practical reasons (such as providing memorable characters and easy to understand character creation UI), and thus we don’t think this situation is unfixable.
Yes, the fact that the Dunmers worship living gods can certainly prevent major syncretism in their society. On the other hand, we think that minor syncretism should be possible, such as the amalgamation between the Divines (which, unlike daedra/demons and the living gods, are much more “passive” in TES’s world) and the Temple’s saints (instead of the living gods), especially if we consider the millennium-long cultural contact and the common threat from Dagoth Ur (which the Empire and the living gods struggle to deal with).
Also, the Baldur’s Gate franchise is certainly a worthy subject for future research!
Agreed! In my game design work, especially for TTRPGs, I often do explicitly try and lean into cultural syncretism, but I partly do that by abandoning the fantasy “definite gods” trope.
And re BG3: it’d be interesting to combine this with the sort of approach I took in my BG3 paper from the session yesterday and ask whether the tendency to treat game characters in predefined faction groups rather than with a more human social network model also hampers this kind of syncretic approach. Looking forward to seeing your future research on this area 🙂
That sounds interesting! Finding a new system for more realistic gods (which can still be “explicitly exist”) is indeed a lot of fun… but also a lot of work. Would love to see your TTRPG religion systems, and I’ll also check your paper, thanks! There is a lot of potential for multi/interdisciplinary research on modeling complex societies for games and interactive narratives here.
This is a fascinating analysis of the game failing to emulate cultural syncretism. Do you think it is due to the game developers’ limited understanding of the way acculturation and blending work; to the technical complexity of implementing this scenario; or to the fact that the game’s projected audience of players might find it confusing?
Thanks, Anastasija! We think it is due to the first reason: the developers’ limited understanding (of both the mechanism of acculturation and how depicting it correctly increases the game’s artistic value). We don’t think it’s technically demanding by itself (i.e., we don’t think it necessitates more complex game/ludonarrative mechanics); even some dialog texts reflecting more nuanced cultural integration would go a long way. We also doubt that the target players would find it confusing; we believe that players are often smarter than we like to think!
What a fascinating paper! Morrowind is to this day my favorite Elder Scrolls game, and your approach to understand its conflict through the lens of East-West relations is brilliant.
My question is: If we zoom out on the world of the Elder Scrolls, do you think a similar approach could be used to unpack the nuances of other places in the Elder Scrolls world? Perhaps using this kind of analysis to unpack Skyrim’s conflicts or the politics of Oblivion? And how would doing so in ESO complicate the analysis given players’ role in the game’s ongoing narrative?
Thanks again for the amazing piece!
Thanks, Johansen! And it’s great to chat with another Morrowind fan.
Yes, I think this method (comparing an in-game cultural contact event with a similar historical event through the lens of Berry’s acculturation model and Auerbach’s narrative reconciliation pyramid) is usable for other places in TES’s world and maybe even the worlds in other game/narrative franchises. Though, I’m not sure what historical cultural contact events we can compare Oblivion and Skyrim to. In the case of player-influenced, multiple possible historical progressions of the game world, the developer usually has a specific worldbuilding pattern/bias (as reflected in, e.g., the game’s narrative mechanics), so maybe we can analyze it instead?
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