Where you're walking along and you find a lady on the side of the road (a fairly common occurrence in Vvardenfell) who claims to be an exotic dancer late for an event who has dropped her prized ring in a nearby murky pool.
Ever the Good Samaritan, you might agree to help and so you wade into the murky water to retrieve the ring.
This is when the lady pulls a knife and the 80% chameleon-hidden NINJA ACCOMPLICE hops out from hiding and they both try to kill you.
This is a classic sort of thing, maybe we can call it Getting Patches'd but I was really affected by just how strange and innocuous and perfectly executed it all was. There was no cut-scene. One of them didn't run up to you, pause the game, and explain to you that they had tricked you and reveal their plan. You grabbed the ring and were immediately in a very dangerous position of two fairly strong enemies on your ass. That moment of realization and panic was so pure because you don't have time to prepare for what you're going to do.
I think to how other entries in the franchise and other games might use this as a jumping-off point for further quests or be carrying a journal explaining their motivations. But here it's just all so self-explanatory and perfect.
Morrowind is a game that somehow achieves the feeling of a hostile and independent world; a world that exists despite you, not for you. I have to guess that a lot of that achievement was driven by technical limitation. Less truly is more when you're trying to create a place for a player to explore.
Edit: if you'd like to follow development on an indie project attempting to capture fragments of these vibes, might I recommend checking out my game! There's no way that this claim will ever come back to haunt me.



