If we're talking Oblivion then they are representations, because those 1500 people in Cyrodiil aren't going to be building any such things. Unless you are going for a reasonable scale like DF had, you're getting a small cartoon of what should be there anyway.

I'd really like to see future Elder Scrolls games swap out the whole Oblivion experience for MegaTexture and fully living cities. I was disappointed that Imperial City wasn't a sprawling metropolis. It was really sort of pathetic.

i think we need to create one final "what oblivion did wrong" thread, because right now its taking up half the threads in this forum. it was fine at first and brought up some valid points... but now its just annoying.

Ahuh, pantheon means all of them.

Having one of the only pantheon-esque temples in the game, and calling it "Temple of the One" seems to be missing the point, really.

I agree. I laughed inside when I saw that the model for the Temple of the One is Pantheonish. However, the symbolism behind it, can be understood I suppose.

Well that one makes sorta sense considering the One is the unknowable god that evolved from the Allesian Orders unification of all gods.

Agreed.

You do know this is a ridiculous line of reasoning.

But it's so much fun thinking about what Cyrodiil could have been like.

Reasoning, what?



I though it was Akatosh... Even so, why would the Allesian "One" be unknowable, when each singular can be known through it's worship or other methods?

To say that since the building has similar elements to a pantheon from our world that it should be a pantheon in theirs. Why, their temple of the one has paired columns, just like the Louvre! It should have works of art displayed, right? And it has a jointed tension ring, like a gazebo! Shouldn't it have more benches inside? It becomes goofy quicker than not to down that road.

It's just a flimsy thing to do, to take an icon with a commonly accepted meaning and pass it off as something completly different. It eschews balance and just puts things in wrong perspective.

Isn't that half the point?

The other point is that a chapel for each god in each city strikes one as terribly convenient. And cheap as hell.

I'll admit that this might be partly due to raised expectations from the zomg awesome graphics. After Morrowind, the progress in TES was supposed to be towards increased hand-crafted individuality and variation rather than the procedurally generated familiarity of Daggerfall.

Ironic that Morrowind made the same mistake with Daedric Ruins.

So it was a mistake then. No dissenting there, huh.

Comparing the ruins from some backwater, isolated and diseased island to the chapels and cathedrals of Capital of the Empire is pretty dire, though.

Firstly, that isn't ironic.

Secondly, I didn't say every chapel had to be in a different architectural style. That would be silly. The Daedric ruins may have been in the same architectural style, but they were all different. They were not the same shrine copy-pasted twenty times. They were also appropriately Lovecraftian, which somewhat suits the Daedra. Made it look like they were twisting the world as they touched it.

But they all looked the same architecture-wise. The shrines of Molag Bal, Mehrunes Dagon, Malacath, and Sheogorath all were cut from the same cloth. It should have at least been noticably architecture for each of the Daedra Princes. And some people are suggesting that the chapels should be all different, I was meaning to give a couter-example of why the perceived mistake isn't exactly new.

You might want to re-read what Albides said because you are repeating him. Though if this is a Oblivion-Morrowind kicking contest, I'd like to point out the Daedric Shrines in Oblivion, they're all build in the same vein.

Yet neither Cyrodiils or Oblivions shrines stands out all that much because they're not identical and don't clash so much with their environment.

But more importantly they are properly polytheistic in that each one god is not attached to one city exclusively as the 'representation' isn't in itself a bad thing, unless it results in the current cookie cutter design.

Considering that they're all just unique statues, I'd say they're pretty different. And either way, it doesn't seem right that ruins of Sheogorath and Mehrunes Dagon in MW looked the same.

But I'm not trying to kick Morrowind, I"m just pointing out that it's done the same thing.

Edit: Added another comment.

Sure, ideally, the daedric shrines should have been different. And yes, we know the "mistake" isn't new. But that's just stating the obvious.

We're talking here about aesthetic considerations, and as I said "I'll admit that this might be partly due to raised expectations from the zomg awesome graphics" as well as the tendency for increased handcrafted uniqueness in the setting.

Gothic cathedrals, though, show a creative bankruptcy on the part of the creative design team. We know every European fantasy game is set in a medieval European stasis. They didn't have to rub it in our noses.

So they didn't opt for a more bizarre atmosphere. There's nothing wrong with doing a medieval European world; just because others do it doesn't make it any worse of a setting. And they did it better than anyone else did.

I was simply pointing out how the irony of the name made me giggle inside. The Temple of the One was clearly baised off of the Pantheon, as a good amount of the Architecture is baised off of Roman and Greek works. Same building? No. Most noticable other then said building, is the wayshrines. Other examples are the ceramics, which are CLEARLY baised off of Greek black-figure painting.

You are correct though in that it is not the same, nore does it serve the same meaning.

Why is the choice between fake medieval Europe and the bizarre? If anything other than medieval Europe is bizarre to you, then that's a terribly myopic view.


Yes, actually, it does.


That isn't much of an accomplishment. But wrong http://www.darklands.no/New%20Omega%20Darklands%20poster%202008_700.jpg. Oh, wait, http://www.darklands.net/faq/darkland.jpg.

Morrowind was bizarre. And it appears almost everyone here didn't want a TES IV, they wanted a Morrowind II.


No it doesn't. It's an example of skewed perspective as a result of being used so many times. But how good it really is would be independent of how often it's actually used.


It might have been good for its time, but it didn't have cutting-edge graphics, a Havoc Engine, or the immersion of a TES game. Even if some say it had far less immersion than its predecessor.

It is when the ruins of Medieval Europe are more interesting then the abstract concept that fantasy extracted from it, something is very wrong. It means it is no longer a fantasy world but a poorly executed cliche.



Badly in this case because there isn't any real distinction or depth in the world.



You didn't actually answer the qeustion. Why is the choice between fake medieval Europe and the bizarre?



Which part of the cutting edge graphics and havoc engine are part of Lore or immersion? Pretty graphics and a poorly implemented physics system don't actually make the world any more interesting.

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Never the less, this seems to be no longer about chapels but you trying to defend Oblivion lack of depth by saying it's a good game. Been there, done that, get over it.

If every game were like Morrowind, it would be cliche. And I found Cyrodiil to be fascinating, personally.