I honestly didn't. After studying art history, all I could see was Rome/Greece everywhere. It is interesting, but not fascinating.
If every game was like morrowind? Yes, very very cliche, becouse your using the word every, implying all.
If a game injected the amount of creativity morrowind did, we would feel like we were not on earth, but a part of the game.

You're not talking to other people. You're talking to me. Besides, they didn't want a Morrowind II, they wanted a TES with some degree of creativity in it.

I'll repeat: Why is the choice between fake medieval Europe and the bizarre?


Sure. See Darklands for a medieval European setting some depth to it. In other cases, it's just, as proweler pointed out, a cliche, an apish imitation for no real good reason other than a lack of creativity.


You need a good engine to make medieval europe a good setting? Silly me, I thought we were talking about how well the setting was pulled off.

You seem fixated on Morrowind. Might I suggest you take a breather and go play it for a bit? The topic was about the architecture in Cyrodiil, if I recall. I know you can't help but try and divert the subject, but try to have some consideration...

If every game used the same setting it would be, not if it added the same amount of depth.

Tell me though, which part of Cyrodiil fascinates you?

I personally thought the temple to Helm was breathtaking.

Everything. I especially like exploring the Cyrodiil wilderness in both Colovia and Nibenay. And I've personally seen that there is a difference.

Cyrodiil as presented in Oblivion is almost completely following the medieval Europe cliche seen in many games. It didn't have to be bizarre, just interesting. Something like the Cyrodiil as seen in the Pocket Guide would have been entirely more interesting, although neither a jungle nor medieval Europe is interesting without culture, politics, or religion.

Just saying everything is a cop out. Go on, describe it in detail.

No, no. He said. The best part of the medieval european setting was the trees!

If you must know, I like the tradional setting; it seems like you guys are just hating on Europe. I like forests and grasslands. I'm not sure how to accuratly describe Nibenay because it is teeming with ponds everywhere; almost like a wetland.

I like the traditional setting; that is where we are at am impasse; you guys don't like it and I do. Our different opinions ensure that we'll never agree on it.

I do not hate Europe in the lest.
But everyone has diffrent tastes on the matter when it comes to games. Agree to disagree seems like a good idea

It's not that we don't like it, it's that we don't like seeing the same setting for the 20 billionth time in a fantasy RPG, especially when it's done twenty times better in several different RPG's. It's an over-used cliche.

It's not about medieval Europe, it's the generic execution of medieval Europe in Oblivion that is bad. You've read enough of these threads to know what the issue is but you keep putting these straw man.

You've been challenged to describe which parts of Oblivion are interesting to you but all you describe is landscape. In other words, nothing that has depth, nothing that relates to the story or the world, nothing that remotely relates to Churches and Cathedrals.

If you like Oblivion because it has a fancy forest that is fine. I can life with that, but stay those discussions where your tree-based opinion just isn't relevant to the topic.

Although a part of the landscapes in European medieval fantasy, these aren't what make it European medieval fantasy.

I don't hate Europe. In fact, I love Europe. I love it as I love many very old locales, and for much the same reason. Because I have an interest in their cultural achievements, and through them the mindset of a people, and what is they valued. But their monuments were not merely cultural markers, they served a function. They engendered a sense of wonder that we feel towards many works of art. Wonder! That's what those gothic cathedrals were for, with their flying buttresses and tall spires. They looked like emaciated angels. They were architecture built of light and splendid grace, made to contribute to a sense of being beyond this world, and when one looks at them, or walks inside them, the effect is to be shifted out of the hum drum, out of the mundane; the transcendent captured in stone.

And there are other ways of provoking wonder than the sublime. And no, it's not limited to the novel or the strange.

More important to me than the fact that they opted for Gothic architecture in the cathedrals is the fact that they neutered them.

Seriously, those things were tiny. They could have at least made them each as large as the High Fane without that much effort, couldn't they've?

Cyrodiil doesn't look at all like Europe, as any who have actually been there can attest. It looks like the misty postcard New Zealand-is-Middle Earth-is-Sarehole image of Europe. If it actually looked like Europe, that would be kind of cool.

But they did some pretty good landscape design for the all the lack of good inspiration.

Okay, I'll give you more. Almost every town in Cyrodiil is unique in its architecture, which is more than could be said for Morrowind, even though their architecture contrasted with each other more. As for depth, they did very well, considering that everyone had typically two things that they said, aside from their greetings. And everyone had something different to say about their town. Not to mention that it contrasted greatly with the Oblivion Gates and Daedra. They probably could have done the Great Chapels better, but hey, they're chapels, not temples.

Wait, why should every town look different? They're often in the same region, with the same religions, culture, ethnic makeup.

The problem is that they are Towns. Not towns, but Towns. Capital letter. Every instance of human habitation is templated and planned like a set of medieval McMansions. There is wilderness. Then there are Towns. Connect the dots with roads and you've got a province. 9 towns, their own architecture, kind of horse, 3 sentence descriptor blurb... I've said it too often.

That's what we have instead of Morrowind's system, where the settlements reflected their surroundings and drew inspiration from that. They weren't classified as Towns, but as something more specific to their features and purpose. Oblivion just went and said, 'we need a town. Get the dozer.' This is the creative process inverted.

Allow me to explain the different architectures. Anvil is Hammerfell-style, because of it's proximity to the province. Bruma is Skyrim-style, and apparently, Cheydinhal is Morrowind-style, all due to their proximity to said provinces. Imperial City has Ayleid influences because it was once an Ayleid city, Chorrol, Kvatch, and Skingrad are Colovian, where Chorrol is a forest town and Skingrad is a more upper-class town, and Kvatch is a moutain town. Bravil and Leyawiin are Nibenese.

Not to mention that only a few of them has lower class quarters. Hell, some don't even have lower class house models!
And you might as well call them "levels" as well as "Towns". All designed so the player won't get bored by the scenery.


Because, apparantly, people have forgotten how to build in anything else than the style of their provincial neighbours, or they are all extremely regionalistic. Seriously, why would anyone build a stone house in Chorrol? The bare thought is ridiculous.

Edit: I just remembered they actually have a few stone houses in Chorrol.
Silly me.

Yes, the Temple of the One indeed looks like the Pantheon, but then impossibly shrunk down and stripped from all interesting things, after which they removed realistic lighting.May I remind you that Europe doesn't really have that much lush forests filled with scattered boulders and grass, with approximately ten metres between each tree and strategically placed mushrooms next to roads? Not to forget that I've never seen an actual swamp/marsh/jungle (that's what the Nibenay region is supposed to be) that consisted of small puddles separated by large patches of grass.

I don't see it.



And what does this mean?

Albides, sometimes your posts are simply breathtaking.

Bravil, Leyawiin, the Imperial City, and Chorrol all have lower class dwellings. Skingrad is an upper-class town, Bruma dwellings are built downwards to make them habitable, therefore giving extra room in any house, Anvil (at least the area outside the docks) is a city that prides itself on beauty, and Kvatch was destroyed. As for Cheydinhal, I got nothing.


Cyrodiil is located in the middle of the provinces and is a "melting pot" of cultures. Besides that, Bruma's dwellings, aside from the nordic carvings in the wood, are built for the purpose of conserving heat.


Considering that we never saw Mainland Morrowind aside from Mournhold, it's probably based on architecture that we didn't see much of in TES III.


So...it isn't a rip-off of something.

The reason that the churches are all the same style is because they are all made to worship the nine. Im guesing that while whoever built the cities was building the cities, the empire sent in special ppl to build the cathedrals (idk if i spelled that rigth or not). Just my guess.

Chorrol's got three lower class buildings. Imperial City has the "Waterfron District", a completely failed attempt at lower class area. The rest of both cities were middle and upper class, where (well, almost) everyone got at least two floors, and a basemant to add to that.
As for Bruma: What about those who can't afford to dig into the ground, then? They wouldn't just leave, they build their shacks somewhere too. Because that's what lower class people do, obviously creating a "lower class district".
And it doesn't matter how beauty-fixated Anvil would be, there would still be poor people, who cannot afford those fancy stone-houses the rest of them. And the docks does not count as a lower class area, as nobody actually lives there, exept for those who has their buisness there.
The same goes for Skingrad. There is no thing as an "upper class town". Towns are dependant on the lower class. Especially Skingrad, even as it was portrayed in game, which relies heavily on lower class workers to keep it's graqe growin' and wine production going. Skingrad did have lower class models though, and even though they were extremely unrealistic in all their grandiour, they fit in quite well and I liked them. Mostly because of the "narrow" alleyways. Still, there were far too few lower class buildings and I would have liked it even more if there were some of the "shack" variant too.
Oh, and as Bravil was supposed to be the "http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WretchedHive" of Cyrodiil, it isn't very strange that it featured lower class buildings.


This is still no explanations as to why you can't find, for example, "Chorrol style" buildings outside that city. Or Skingrad architecture anywhere else than in Skingrad. Or why Cheydinhal doesn't have buildings in any style other than the one influenced by Morrowind culture. Or any of these "schools" in the IC.


Seriously, very few people are arguing that Oblivion ripped off http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe, they're saying it's http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MedievalEuropeanFantasy.