Okay, everyone. Brace yourselves for some scholarly analysis.
I made a mistake in the above posts by referring to "lawful" good. It makes sense that the law vs. chaos axis of alignment exists in tabletop RPGs, where one's imagination obviously forms a large part of the setting, but video games are different, and in the case of Morrowind and Skyrim, that kind of alignment isn't left up to you. It's very much ingrained in the setting. Morrowind is a land of law, and Skyrim is a land of chaos. This is also reflected in the gameplay. Almost all of the little quirks of the two games can be explained by the alignment it adheres to.
Law and order are everywhere in Morrowind. The first part of the main quest has you reporting to a clear authority figure, Caius, who represents an even bigger authority, the Empire. He immediately puts you to work doing seemingly mundane tasks gathering information on local legends without even telling you that you might be the Nerevarine until you're a few quests in. If you're anything like me, you might be calling this main quest things like, "stupid," or "undermining," or "boring as tar," but then you're missing the point, just like I was. The Blades are a formal organization with a strict hierarchy and rank structure that you need to ascend before Caius is going to stop treating you like a rookie and start giving you information that isn't purely need-to-know. And the rest of the main quest is quite similar. Your eventual goal is to become the Hortator, a political position recognized by the Great Houses and Ashlander tribes, so whether you choose to be good or evil, your role as the protagonist is inherently lawful.
The same applies to all the other joinable factions in the game. Remember, there's about a dozen of them, and even more if we count the ones that you can't join. Another reflection of the general lawfulness of life in Morrowind. The Morag Tong in particular deserves some special attention. Provided they follow all the regulations and fill out the proper paperwork, murder-for-hire is perfectly legal for them. And even the villain, Dagoth Ur, is lawful evil. He sits politely in his own little region of the map and waits for you to come visit him - okay, granted, the Tribunal are keeping him contained there, but even the agents that he has on the outside aren't actively disrupting life in Morrowind, the burden is on you to actively go and confront them. And when you do meet Dagoth Ur, he reveals himself to be fairly polite and respectful in demeanor, as well as willing to have a reasoned discussion with you prior to your battle commencing.
In Skyrim, everything is reversed, and chaos rules the day. This part is particularly relevant for those of you who complain about Skyrim being dumbed-down, because you're just not seeing the genius behind it all. The classless leveling system, the combat that relies more on bashing people in the face with shields than intricate dice-rolling mechanics, the conversation that doesn't involve long lists of keywords you need to sort through - it's all a reflection of the chaos of the time. Look at the guilds. No longer are they orderly pyramid-style hierarchies, but loosely-organized groups with leaders who have very ad hoc management styles.
The main quest and setting reflect this as well. Skyrim has already been torn apart by civil war, and now dragons are wrecking it even further. There is no central authority for you to report to throughout the main quest (hence bounties only applying in the holds where you earned them), and so, while the Blades and Greybeards back you up to a degree, you're largely a chaotic hero, doing what needs to be done without any "official" orders. And just as you are chaotic, so too, are your foes. The dragons fly everywhere and attack everyone and everything. They have no plans, no marching orders, nothing beyond causing destruction. People criticize Alduin for not being particularly memorable as a villain or having any kind of interesting plan or motivation. Well, of course he doesn't. He's chaotic evil, and destroying the world is a perfect fit for that.
Bear in mind that I'm not saying that one of these alignments is or isn't better than the other, or that one of these games does or doesn't realize its chosen alignment better than the other. All I'm saying here is that they complete one another. Morrowind shows Tamriel at its most lawful, and Skyrim shows it at its most chaotic, but it's still the same Tamriel. Taken together, these two games form a masterpiece of thematic contrast, and that is the best way to appreciate what Bethesda has wrought in its genius. But I'm sure that some of you are now saying, "Well, that's all well and good, Saddam, but how do you know it's intentional on their behalf?" I do not know that it is, I admit. I might just be reading way, way too much into a couple of video games. But then again, consider the wise words of Vivec, in his
fourth sermon:
A troupe of spirits called the Lobbyists for the Coincidence Guild appeared. Vivec understood the challenge immediately and said:
'The popular notion of God kills happenstance.'
The head of the Lobbyists, whose name is forgotten, tried to defend the concept's existence. He said, 'Saying something at the same time can be magical.'
Vivec knew that to retain his divinity that he must make a strong argument against luck. He said:
'Is not the sudden revelation of corresponding conditions and disparate elements that gel at the moment of the coincidence one of the prerequisites to being, in fact, coincidental? Synchronicity comes out of repeated coincidences at the lowest level. Further examination shows it is the utter power of the sheer number of coincidences that leads one to the idea that synchronicity is guided by something more than chance. Therefore, synchronicity ends up invalidating the concept of the coincidental, even though they are the symptomatic signs that bring it to the surface.'
Thus was coincidence destroyed in the land of the Velothi.
Beautifully stated. May the CHIM be with you.