It's been a while since we touched ESO but.. Are these the same guy? I don't know! It sure doesn't feel like it. As much as Morrowind is a game from 2002 there are ways to modernize an art style without making it lose its original intent and I think ESO is like that lady who thought she could restore that painting of jesus in many ways. "I can do better", but then you look at what they did and it feels.. wrong.
Vivec is so shiny in ESO, his temple is lushly decorated in gold and that all feels off in a way that's hard to explain without sounding like a turbo-nerd nitpicking things, but I was thinking just now that they managed to fuck up his skin, it's shiny like metal, instead of normal (for fantasy race skin tones) dark elf skin and chimer yellow. there's reasons why Vivec's skin looks the way it does, the yellow isn't meant to be made of gold like ESO interpreted it, it's meant to represent the people who came before the Dunmer, the Dunmer were literally "cursed" to become that way because of the betrayal of the Oath the Tribunal gods made with Azura. Making him shiny, his temple shiny, his armor shiny and his fucking skin reflective gold ironically overshadows all meaning behind the original design, which is some genuinely neat fantasy writing because it's intertwined with an intriguing universe and its inner politics and religions. They genericized one of the most important dudes™ in morrowind lore because.... idk. everyone in ESO is too conventionally attractive, you get the impression playing morrowind that the Dunmer are a historied, hardy people, from the velothi of the summerset isles to the harsh lands of vvardenfell with its volcanic ash storms and aggressive fauna and inhospitable planes, but they made do and conquered it.
Morrowind is the intersection of a strange, fascinating culture clashing with the interests of the traditionally expansionist colonizer cosmopolitan Empire and its influences on the region and its people. there's a conflict of faiths, which is made absolutely fascinating by the role the player could play in prophecy and being labeled a heretic and ostracized by the ruling religion, the Tribunal and their temple, the Dunmer don't need to worship the 9 divines because they literally had living gods living among them, with a dark history that was purposefully kept from public knowledge so as to not diminish their immense power and influence on their faithful worshippers. Calling all of this "lore" feels like I'm being unfair to the original ideas Morrowind brought to the table and to the Elder Scrolls universe, because lore implies to me something you can easily ignore and doesn't matter, but the "lore" is why Morrowind remains in public consciousness to this day. the combat sucks, but the world is so fantastic it kept people hooked, it inspired reimaginings (that missed the mark) and fan expansions that are so devoted to this corner of the world it's impressive.
anyways I see ESO Vivec and I see a shiny quest giver not a character.
