How does bethesda justify things like taking spears and crossbows off the face of the world? doesnt that just completely mess up lore?
what about levitation spells and the rest of that stuff i guess my question is has bethesda ever answered this question? id like for someone to link it to me if its out there

thanks

They did not say anything about crossbows, and they said they are not adding spears traditional, I don't know what that means.

Spears and Crossbows and Levitation and [etc] are not gone from the world presented in lore. They are gone from the world as a viable option in your gameplay approximation of the world presented in lore.

Well they dictate lore. They can do whatever they like. I doubt they would throw out all of their lore just because they can.

Todd says it pretty well. Some stuff is not there since it does not contribute enough to the game.
Or it is just too much trouble to add them in.


You need to prioritize some stuff is more important to do than others.

Flails are 'lore' but no one is clamouring for their return.

How can Bethesda justify making Skyrim thousands of times smaller than it actually is in lore?

Exactly, you never here how spears have been outlawed or that mages are no long able to teach mark and recall - but the these are just elements of gameplay that change.

Sometimes there are in-game reasons, such as the levitation ban in Tribunal, but most of the time these aren't actually changes to the world itself.

To give a more particular example of the problems of assuming gameplay is a all-encompassing representation of the world lore, we would have to assent that the world is populated by fleshy organic pullstring dolls that spit forth predetermined sentences from an inherently limited list of responses, rather than rational and real people that have an infinite capacity for speech and conversation.

Lore is of secondary importance when it comes to producing a viable game so that they can make money.

There where not crossbows in Oblivion still M'aiq the Liar mentioned them :wink_smile:

Yup, this basically. Lore is just a usefull tool for engaging the player, but gameplay and practicality will always have to take precedence.

It's Skyrim.

Maybe no one in Skyrim makes spears, like in Cyrodiil. Maybe no one sells Levitation spells because no one who knows it bothered to teach it to anyone else and so it's not in the gameplay aspect. It didn't fall off the face of Nirn, it just isn't used in that specific province.

Easy explanation. Totally acceptable.

EDIT: To even further expand on my explanation: when is there ever a need for a Levitation spell in Oblivion? When would it even be useful at all? Never, really. The Telvanni were big on making use of Levitation spells, and why? Because the Telvanni are giant elitist jerks. If their headquarters are hard to reach, good, that's what they want. Cyrodiil isn't like the Telvanni and they don't want to force usage of such spells. Therefor, due to a severe lack of need of a levitation spell, people never ask for it so people stop selling it. After a while, no one really remembers how to do it except for some people from the other provinces, and again, since there's still no need, no one cares and no one asks for it, so still no one teaches anybody the spell.

With spears, people get used to fighting with swords, maces, hammers, and axes. Combat with spears gets used less. Less demand, less supply. Eventually, no one's using spears anymore. It just happens.

just becuase there is a technological innovation in once place doesn't mean it is going to be in another, stuff takes a long time to travel and learn about, also the fall of the empire would have made it a lot harder

ZING!

Good point. But at the same time, what if I'm playing as an exiled Telvanni noble? Or an Argonian Spear user? It does kinda restrict the ability to play a character properly if (according to my backstory) I can't use a weapon that they've used since birth. Hell, in Morrowind, http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Spear :shifty:

Note that I'm not really upset about the loss of spears. Just feel like contributing to the discussion.

If you're an exiled Telvanni noble, just imagine that you don't see the need to Levitate since it's not required anywhere, or that you don't want to display your Levitation powers because you don't want anyone bothering you for the spell. If you're an Argonian Spear-user...well...you're not anymore, I guess.

As far as Nords having a bonus to spear... :shifty:

Well, hell, I guess the only viable excuse I can come up with is that the Nords of Solstheim use spears but the Nords of Skyrim don't. Not a good excuse, but hey, it justifies it in my mind.

Yeah, how would the Lusty Argonian Maid be reprised if there were no spears to polish? :hubbahubba:

How does it break the lore? Firearms break the lore. Not having one of the classic races break lore. But spears and crossbows are just weapons, one must assume you can find them around, they're just not available to be played with for a number of reasons, whatever they may be.

Contrary to popular belief, people in Cyrodill did grow beards and children were actually running around. Lore and actual gameplay features are different things.

+1

It's all about suspending disbelief. Children exist in Cyrodiil and the Imperial City houses hundreds if not thousands of people and there are Dark Brotherhood sanctuaries in all of the major cities in Cyrodiil. None of that is actually true from a gameplay experience, but as far as I'm concerned, from a roleplaying perspective, it's 100% true. Same goes for Spears, Levitation, and Crossbows. They exist, there's just less of a demand for them in Cyrodiil so they aren't as common as all of the other weapons.

It means...... Bec De Corbins! Halberds! Polearms for every conceivable situation! :ahhh: :tongue:

I don't really see why we cant have spears, if we had them in New Vegas.

Yes they did. Listen more. Crossbows are not in.

Space compression is a common tactic of developers. It's done because in actuality, Skyrim could not be hand-crafted AND to-scale. Reason being that the bigger the in-game map, the greater the content. More content means harder to make by hand, easier to make by random generation. To make Skyrim to-scale, would require Daggerfall to Dwarf Fortress levels of random generation. The only other option is to not give you an open-world, or use design tactics that simplify production.

Other option examples.
Option 1:
a. Dragon Age: Origins, note how you are only presented small portions of Denerim, the largest settlement you visit in game, and how you never get to explore the army camp, but only the Tower of Ishal, the field hospital, a camp by the ash warriors, the royal camp, a small training area, the Warden's camp, and the mages camp. (all right next to each other) at Ostagar. If it would be too big to reasonably design, they never showed you it.

Option 2:
a. Grand Theft Auto. Rather than use hand-placed NPC's, grand Theft Auto randomly generates a crowd to occupy the streets and gives them very basic behaviors. Prototype does this as well. So do most Grand theft auto clones.
b. The Sabetour, and all GTA clones, feature buildings you cannot enter. TES has, since morrowind, let you enter pretty much every building.

Actually the loss of levitation does enter into the realm of lore as does the inability to travel thru walls, which was a spell back when Daggerfall came out, the lore part comes into play when they say it has been lost to time and events, as for spears and crossbows there is no telling what WILL be in the final cut of the DVD as of this time, the only thing about spears that he said was they are in game at this time but not as a thrown weapon, meaning that may change or not depending on issues they have with one and two handed weapons, as for crossbows there was no yay or nay on that question at all.