Why on earth would gunpowder ever end up proliferated in a world where people can summon exploding fireballs with their mind? "Oh, while you're reloading your primitive, one shot muskets, I'll just turn the entire area where your army is standing into a sea of fire." Technology and engineering are what comes about to solve particular problems in the
real world, where magic is imaginary (and, looking at the modern pop-cultural concept of a wizard in a tower full of esoteric diagrams, apparently a layman's conception of an engineer). To compound that, the people educated enough to devise such things in the first place are probably educated in magic, leaving them with a sort of "why bother working with this horribly inefficient, expensive theory, when I can just blow things up with my mind?" state of mind.
Magic also supplies answers to just about every other problem technology and engineering tries to solve: mages can walk on and breath under water, they can move heavy objects with their mind, they can heal mortal wounds, and in Morrowind they could fly and teleport at will, even operating a network of teleportation stations for non-mages to use. There's just no driving reason to create more advanced technology in such a world. Honestly, I'd expect to see mages in a more prominent role, with more refined techniques, but then again their divisive and batshit insane internal politics likely precludes that, what with things like their sudden and unfounded/unprecedented necromancy ban and whatnot (and the "ban" on levitation, slowfall, and jumping spells
).
Oh, going back to Argonians and Khajiit with digitigrade legs, do we have confirmation that these races will even be in? I recall reading something about Black Marsh and Elsweyr seceding from the empire and being at war with every other race, which to me sounds like an awfully convenient excuse not to have either of the beast races at all in Skyrim.
Let's hope. Skyrim's probably too cold for the lizard fuckers, and here's to hoping drunken vikings don't like filthy furries either. Will be a bit sad that we can't violently purge them from the lands ourselves, though.
I did like the more bestial appearance they had in Morrowind, though. They're filthy beasts below Men and Mer, and it's all the better when they look the part, instead of being freakish anthropomorphic lizards and cats.