What happens when you take a blank slate of a character, and you make that non-character the main character, or at least the character from whom’s perspective the story is experienced? You get a bunch of people who get extremely attached to the character. When you let them design the character as well, they feel like they own that character. Character creation is one of the most appealing parts of the Elder Scrolls franchise. Getting to lovingly sculpt your virtual avatar into the exact shape you want is a great bonding activity for the player and player character. Once you’re done, you have invested some time into the development of the person you’ll be controlling, and thereby making you invested in it. There is no issue with creating character investment by having the player generate the character, unless that character is in anyway important to the game world.
There have been quite a handful of heroes in Elder Scrolls games, so I’m only going to talk about the first one in-depth today. I’m of course referring to the hero from Arena, the Eternal Champion. The Eternal Champion did not escape general notice, even if he is described as being “enigmatic”, or as “courageous, indefatigable, and forever nameless” (his name was Talin, at least in the game manual).
I’m not sure how it is exactly possible for his general traits to not be recorded. Uriel Septim VII honored his champion immediately after he was freed, saying he would have a place at his side. So did Uriel lie? Did he try to hush up the events? And if so, he did a terrible job of it. His biography mentions the events quite clearly, there was plenty of public documentation of the event. I just don’t know how a person, who traveled across the entire continent, talking with countless people along the way, and even acknowledged by the most powerful ruler in the land after he rescued him, could not be famous. Or what about his involvement with Queen Barenziah and King Eadwyre, who were responsible for the information the Champion received through Ria Silamane? Considering his mentions in relation to the general history of the Empire, and his involvement with some of the most important historical figures of his time, how did he just disappear?
Let’s assume that the Eternal Champion, Talin, was a total recluse after the events of the game. He never did anything notable again. Or let’s even say he died immediately after freeing the Emperor somehow. He just falls dead after the end of the game. He was still, while living and active in the events of the world, known by a huge number of people throughout the world. Arena absolutely required you to talk to random characters to find the dungeons where the pieces of the Staff of Chaos were hidden. And not just random people, the mages of the College, various rulers, people who would remember you and would likely even keep a record of you. Even if all of these very important people did not bother keeping any kind of record of you, after the defeat of Jagar Tharn, no one came forward and said they knew you?
If I had to guess, there is no rational lore explanation available. The real answer is that Bethesda Softworks didn’t want to define this character the player controlled and made, even if it means the game world needs to ignore the player character. They didn’t want to take that bit of fun away from the player, believing that however they would define the character, they would piss off almost everyone, even people who made their version of the character in the described way. And there assumption was correct. One of the most common issues on this site is whenever we have to mention any of the heroes in the game, people will mess with it. They’ll change character titles, character details, and will constantly argue about any policy relating to our management of them.
While I’m going to talk about this more later, let’s look at the hero from Morrowind, the Nerevarine. Neloth, a character who would most likely know the Nerevarine for most ways you could complete the main quest, called him “him” in his special return in Dragonborn. Not “him” if you were also a him, but him if you were male or female. And people were upset, even going so far as to call it a bug or an oversight. While it even kind of makes sense if he was male as his past incarnation, Indoril Nerevar, was, fans were still upset over having the option of him being female later called wrong. It is just impossible to give these characters, well, character, without upsetting the people who would want to see them further developed.
