Morrowind's House politics would break Skyrim and I miss it

[EbonyWarrior]

I've been replaying Morrowind again (yeah I know, I'm that guy) and it hit me how much the faction systems in Skyrim feel hollow by comparison. Like, the Companions are fine, the Thieves Guild questline is genuinely good, but none of them have the teeth that House Hlaalu or House Telvanni had. You couldn't just join a faction and do radiant jobs forever. You had to pick a side. You had to betray people. Your choices actually locked you out of other paths.

Skyrim lets you join literally every faction at once and nobody cares. You can be Listener, Guildmaster, Harbinger, and Thane of every hold simultaneously. It's kind of ridiculous when you think about it. Morrowind would've had you choose between Hlaalu's mercantile approach and Telvanni's magical supremacy, and that choice mattered for the entire rest of the game.

I'm not saying Skyrim's worse because of it - the combat is infinitely better, the atmosphere is tighter, the voice acting actually exists - but man, there's something about being forced to commit to a faction identity that made the game feel more real. You couldn't be everything to everyone.

Does anyone else feel like the factions would hit harder if they were mutually exclusive? Or am I just nostalgic for something that would actually be annoying on a second playthrough.

 

[DragonbornVet]

You're not wrong about the mutual exclusivity thing, but I think you're maybe romanticizing Morrowind a bit. Yeah, the house politics were interesting, but a lot of that came from the fact that Morrowind's factions were just... slower and more tedious to progress through. The radiant jobs in Skyrim let you actually feel like you're part of an organization; Morrowind made you do the same fetch quest five times before you got promoted.

That said, you're right that Skyrim's approach is basically consequence-free roleplay. Being Listener and Guildmaster simultaneously is dumb narratively. The game doesn't even acknowledge it. But I'm not sure hard-locking factions would've fixed that - it would just make replays feel more restrictive, which is already a complaint people have about Morrowind. You'd just end up with people using console commands to reset faction standings anyway, or save-scumming to test different paths.

The real issue is that Skyrim's factions don't have enough actual conflict baked into their quests. The Thieves Guild stuff with Mercer Frey actually works because there's betrayal and real stakes. The Dark Brotherhood has actual plot momentum. But the Companions? You're just doing jobs and then suddenly you're a werewolf and everyone's fine with it. There's no tension.

If they'd made factions compete for your time and resources rather than locking you out entirely, that might've hit the sweet spot. Make joining the Dawnguard actually cost you something with the Volkihar side, not just lock it off. That feels more natural than "you can't touch the Thieves Guild if you joined the Companions."