Seems to me Pete was just rounding the year. It's something people do.

It's hilarious how bent out of shape so many people on this thread have gotten, spinning everything into lies and conspiracies. Sheesh.

except he was actually replying to someone asking if the 200 is a rounded number or not, the way he answers makes it clear it isnt, its just conpiracy nuts that cant accept such a simple answer.

Hah. If it doesn't progress the timeline...

People: "BUT I WANTED TO SEE HOW THINGS WENT AFTER FALLOUT 3!"

Todd Howard: "The water tasted better."

I see! My apologies to the nuts!

Well, if nothing else then they're slightly defying expectations. I'm okay with that; wasn't that eager to see any F3 characters reappearing, anyway.

Winterhold?

Werebears?

Volkihar?

And your source that says they were more accepting to destruction magic is presumably the same as mine. It was never "ALL of them accept it," just some, while other schools were shunned. Yes they have their sword magic, but one can presume that they do not consider it as such since they never bring it up or refer to it as controversial.

Moreover, it's about the narrative and how terrible it is. There's this great little mechanic called "foreshadowing" that writers use. How often do you hear a book, TV show or other form of media offer some kind of mystical prophecy near the start, and then the prophecy turns out to be bullcrap? It never happens. In writing, prophecies are almost always fulfilled, at least in part or by some definitions, because providing the reader with a prophecy and then saying "LOL JUST KIDDING" 10 chapters later is crappy writing.

You don't take Oblivion as the last "chapter" of the series, fill it with examples of Redguards not being fond of magic, and then POOF, very next "chapter" in the series, suddenly they're pretty damned talented at it. It means that the examples we were given in Oblivion held absolutely zero meaning or purpose. Just as the stories of Winterhold held no purpose, just as the stories of werebears held no purpose, just as the stories of the volkihar and cyrodiil's vampire strains held no purpose, and all of this explained away with "it's been 200 years, things change." Yes, yes they do, but from a writing perspective, this is god awful.

That's why I'd much prefer smaller time jumps. They provide the excuse, though it still doesn't make things feel any less disjointed when the new game contradicts things learned in the last.

I feel like gkk7z is going to have to cut out his tongue if 2285 doesn't turn out to be correct. Dude is as adamant as the Direnni Tower XD

I think he's more bent on seeing FO4 set after FO3, not exactly on 2285...

What about them?

Why would they? if such a thing were true, it would be common knowledge, and not something that needs to be brought up.

This isn't something like NV where the courier gets to ask "WHAT IS TEH NCR!", despite the fact they came from the NCR. What you are complaining about is the same as saying that because people in a game set in a modern city don't talk abut having these things called cars that they drive, it means they have no cars at all. They simply don't talk about it for the same reason people don't talk about cars existing as if the person they are talking to has never heard of it. Because everyone knows about them already.

It happens in series whose fundamental point is to point out how idiotic the idea of prophecy is.... like TES in general, or when the point of the narrative is to stop said prophecy, like in Dawnguard. Hell, the ENTIRE basis of the Elder Scrolls series is that the prophecies CAN be avoided. Its the fundamentalist linchpin of the universe's narrative that prophecies are [censored], and only happen because people CHOSE to make them happen.

The Redguards have been good at magic since Morrowind released and invented the Shehai. Oblivion was the one that changed that, and that's just local custom. Skyrim just showed more traditional Redguards, rather then the empire homogenized Redguards of Cyrodiil.

Your chapter anology also ignores the fact that TES games are not direct equals to each other narrative wise, and take place across a land the size of Africa, where customs would logically be different on one side compared to the other.

And no, the change is explained by the fact that the books are written not as 100% word-of-god truth narrative devices, but as things written from an in-universe perspective, by flawed people, with flawed logic, and full of racial, religious, and historical bias.

Not everything is supposed to have a purpose, that's not how the real world works, nor would a fictional world trying to be real be the same. The devs have stated this several times, even going so far as to laugh at people who try to take the pocket guide as canon fact, because of how obviously full of [censored] propaganda it is.

The passage of time has nothing to do with it.

All of your points seem to ignore basically everything that defines realistic behavior in favor of singular, homogenous, racial stereotypes, where everyone of the same race acts exactly the same, no matter where they are in the world, and where every book is 100% total fact all the time, and can never be wrong.

For someone who like to complain about narratives, you don't really seem to have a good grasp on what makes them up.

That, or you just have very little knowledge about TES lore.

The man has a thing about being right. But only time will remotely tell if anything he's predicted will be true or not.

You guys sure do a lot of arguing about TES lore in FO4 threads.

On topic: I believe Todd said "you leave the vault EXACTLY 200 years later" in one of the E3 interviews, and Pete's tweet seems to confirm the 200 year timeline. As much as some people love their theory-crafting, in this case I think they're off base.

That's...really not going to stop them. They WANT it to be later, and they will try to theorize to rationalize that.

Like the string of "You're and Android/the intro is a simulation" theories from people who use it as a hug pillow against the Married With Child setup.

It's like a compensation...

You don't have a girlfriend/boyfriend/someone to hug = a pillow would do, preferrably with a picture of a person you like on it.

Seriously, I like delving into theory and speculation threads, but like everybody else has pointed, some of them are really... Insane -w-'

Like the recent one, "V.A.T.S. is a chem"! *gasp*

I dont believe he used the word EXACTLY actually.

I just hate seeing people get everything that makes TES stand out wrong, and then act like it was always that way.

The VATS theory that just came up I kinda understand, and I think we ALL are kinda curious how the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System actually works in the middle of a firefight, from a device on your wrist. But I just utilize my suspension of disbelief.

VATS is the result of universal bleed-through from the TES universe.

TES's CHIM is so powerful it stretches beyond its own narrative and influences other games. Vault-TEC discovered this weak-CHIM force and found a way to harness it with the power of the ATOM! and SCIENCE!, and ingratiated this into their pipboys.

ALTADOON VAULT-TEHK!

As a writer, everything you include should hold purpose. You can watch TV shows such as Game of Thrones where something is conveyed simply by the camera focusing on a single character with a poker face when a vital piece of information is spoken. There's no purpose in filling Oblivion with references to Redguards being adverse to magic and then in Skyrim: poof, it's two of their tag skills and every other Redguard utilizes spells. You can keep saying "Redguard have used magic since forever," but you've yet to cite a single example outside of their own unique brand of magic, which since it's so integrated within their culture, of course it's an exception for them. We were shown they distrust traditional schools; Skyrim is noticeably the first game where Redguards have had magic skills tagged.

And I'm not saying cultures cannot change or exceptions cannot be made. For example, the librarian in Winterhold's college is an Orc. Do I complain about this? No.....though I should. I believe in exceptions, of course I do, and as such it's not hard to believe that this orc wants to study the arcane.....that he's their librarian is a bit of an odd choice, seeing as how orcs are limited on a lifespan, but whatever, that's besides the point. What I am saying is that cultural transitions should be hinted at. If the Nords are going to become spellcasters culturally in the next game, then hint at this in Skyrim. Don't say "Bah! We hate magic!" in Skyrim and then when (pure example ahead) Elder Scrolls: High Rock comes out and magic is the God Tier stuff cause of Bretons, they cater to the public by given the most popular race (Nords) talent in magic aswell. I want consistency and a clear transitional path, not "SURPRISE, ORCS LOVE WEARING DRESSES NOW!! IT'S IN THEIR CULTURE!!" No, present me with a quest NPC in the previous title who was an orc that was fond of Imperial dresses and had a clear goal of making a shop back in her own home to sell such clothing, then show her as the source of the cultural shift next game. You need to connect the dots, not leap from them.

And can you give examples of prophecies not being fulfilled within the Elder Scrolls? Because as I recall, Morrowind is built around a damned prophecy. The prophecy example was only to communicate a point about foreshadowing and good writing mechanics anyways, but I don't seem to recall any examples of prophecies failing left and right within TES.

Actually, the VATS is a carry over from the target-based targeting from the original Fallout's. See if you right clicked your attack option, and then the enemy, you'd get a layout of the enemy and it's body parts, with the percentage to hit it...

This system lives on in what we now know as VATS.

fallout 3 doesn't end in the same year it begins

that is if u wait 24 hours 365 times like i did

That is true in a book, tv show, movie, that has limited pages/screen time to get the needed information to advance the narrative across, but in a game like TES, that is not the case AT ALL. TES is meant to be a WORLD, not a NARRATIVE, and worlds are exactly that, full of purposeless things, and books filled with wrong information. TES is that way because it is trying to portray a realistic world, rather then a world that is nothing more then a backdrop for a narrative, such as Game of Thrones. games are not linear narrative like GoT, or LotR, or anything else, where you only see what is absolutely needed to advance the plot, because that is all they have time for. TES however is a GAME, where you can explore beyond the hill Frodo and Sam passed, but never ventured to.

Any attempts to try to equate games with other forms of media is fundamentally flawed and fallacious.

Also, we have never had a game, post lore reboot in Morrowind, set inside an area with large amounts of Redguards, so it had no reason to be brought up. Same reason why changes in the values of people in China don't get brought up in America ever. It shouldn't be, because its not relevant to the local people.

Mages can use magic to live nearly forever, and The Orc implies he has been around since the second era. Not to mention there were Orcs and Redguards(though only a dead one) as far back as Morrowind.

Also, how exactly can they hint at cultural changes before they even know they want to make them? That's like suggesting they should have hinted at the Dragon War as far back as Arena, before they even knew they would get as far as Skyrim. Game devs aren't psychic, they don't know what they want to do before they want to do it.

Dawnguard, siding with the Dawnguard faction prevented the Prophecy of the Sun from being fulfilled.

And technically the Nerevarine prophecy was never fulfilled. The final part proclaims that the Nerevarine would speak law for their people, that he would speak for their land, and name them great. But he actually just decided to leave for Akavir, causing Morrowind to fall into a [censored]hole with plagues of Nord/Orc barbarians, Daedric and Argonian invasions, having giant rocks fall on them and destroy one of their major cities, and get a volcano blown all over them.

It was a joke m8.

Does he really? I remember him mentioning that the library has books from the Second Era, and that bad things will happen to you if you don't show the books the care and respect they deserve, but that's a far cry from "I've been a librarian for centuries!"

I don't need to be proved right at all. I just like to look at the bigger picture, and to see how everything falls together as a whole.

All of the detail in the trailer and the E3 showcase stems from Bethesda's efforts over the last six-and-a-half years, which is an extraordinary amount of time in game development compared to most. Just to put this in perspective, by the time Fallout 4 launches, there will have been eight major releases in the Call of Duty franchise since the release of Fallout 3.

I'm not saying that other series' are in any way invalid, simply that few have the sheer depth and level of detail as BGS's Fallout or TES titles. And this level of detail, certainly in this case, carries through into the footage that we have seen. All I have done is read between the lines and tied as many of these details together as possible in a way that makes sense. And so if I am proved right on any or all of these, it won't by down to my own efforts. It will be down to the devs who have ingeniously left us so many trails of breadcrumbs to follow.

In a nutshell, I'm simply building a loaf of bread.

Being a game does not exempt you from the rules of proper writing. Nothing I suggested limits the narrative and forces it to be linear.

You're correct with the Orc. I was trying to recall if he'd used magic or not, for some reason I thought he hadn't, but he has.

And no, mage orcs and redguard are definitely abnormal. Oblivion featured zero orcs and two redguards in the Mages guild. These are not cultures that embrace magic.

Finally, you're again citing one example of a prophecy being broken. Morrowind I'd argue you're taking the last step too literal. And as for Dawnguard...?

Ask yourself this: how much cooler would it have been if the Dawnguard side fulfilled the prophecy too, albeit in a perhaps unexpected way? See how that works? See how that makes you think "WOAH COOL!" That's because they tied up a loose end, which is what a writer should normally do.

So when it comes time for FO4? I for one am happy to hear that we won't be doing a ridiculous 200 years jump after FO3, and I just hope that they don't accidently develop a plot hole given how close the timeline is to FO3.

Well [censored] now I'm second-guessing myself again. Brb, I'll look it up.

The player can point out that he takes his work very seriously, and he responds that if he didn't, many of these books would have dissolved before the third era, implying that HE has been keeping them intact for that long.

Its possible its just some boast, but given that we know mages like Divayth Fyr exist, who predate Alessia herself, with comments made that there are EVEN OLDER mages in existence around the world, though mostly in the Summerset Isles, its not unreasonable to assume he is that old.

Dragonborn: You take your work very seriously.

Urag: Of course I do. If I didn't, most of these books would've been burned to ashes or dissolved to nothing before the Third Era. Mages need to be reminded to be careful around research materials.

-Proper writing for one medium is not always proper for another. Movies and TV shows for example have very different parameters for "proper" writing, since TV shows last longer and can include for fluff movies cannot.

-Oblivion is also known for [censored] the lore of the series

-I am taking it as literally as every other step in the prophecy was.

-That would have been terrible, and would have been nothing more then the same [censored] LOL IRONIC TWIST! [censored] pretentious games like the Witcher try to pull to make themselves seem "smarter" then they actually are, but in doing so take out any sense of accomplishment from everything you do. Its the most base and boring form of armchair intellectual writing a series can have. Why would I enjoy a game that tells me everything I did was pointless?

If FO4 takes place at same time as FO3, then, we can plausibly expect to encounter organized, supported, Enclave units.

If FO4 takes place after FO3, then, the plausibility of Enclave units in any organized capacity decreases, except as refugees, and hopeless hold outs.