Anyone read thru all the pulp fiction for Conan, Kull, etc.? Have to admit I picked up all works compiled. If Skyrim is influenced by the low fantasy (sword and sorcery) aspect of Howard's work this could be a pretty interesting twist to the ES series although it seems to already fit.

I think that rather than Skyrim being influenced by Conan, Kull, etc. it's more that both are influenced by Viking cultures. Though i do think they got at least some influence from Conan, most came from real life ancient cultures. Think Beowulf.

Howard's work contains references from viking and north african cultures. Its basically how I'd imagine Skyrim + Hammerfell. Beowulf is a bit over-the-top.

I haven't read any of REH's Kull stories, but I have read all his Conan work many times as well as much post-Howard Conan pulp. I have no idea whether Conan stories influenced the original TES dev's, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.

Honestly the last trailer made me think more of the animated Beowulf movie more than anything else.

I've always considered it a good fit - it seems to be just a matter of how they tell and present the stories and lore, because what's there is already pretty similar at its core. And I think Skyrim's just the best opportunity so far to openly use Conan as inspiration, not least because of the rugged nature of the province and its natives - civil war in a harsh, monster-haunted winter landscape. All of my TES characters are inspired by Conan to one degree or another.

This is assuming they're primarily taking Howard's fiction as an influence, and not the Conan films, though they're just as appropriate (even the dire yet entertaining Conan the Destroyer).

Beowulf is actually an Anglo-Saxon saga. Many scholars believe that the Norse (Viking) version of Beowulf (the man) is the warrior Bodvar Bjarki (warlike little bear) who appears in the Icelandic saga 'The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki'.

P.S. I love the Conan stories

Mr. Sigurdsson is correct. The sense i get is that the developers are going for a more general "northness" based on our own cultural heritage, both British and Scandinavian. The Conan stories operate in much the same way as laid out in some of Howards own musings on his work. Anything too specific would just take us out of Tamriel.

I haven't actually read any of the Conan stories, but Bethesda could certainly be going for a sort of Conan-like vibe with Skyrim, though that may just be due to going for a similar feeling and drawing from similar mythological sources rather than an actual attempt to base the game off of Conan stories or related material. Though I wouldn't be surprised if Skyrim is partially inspired by Conan, whether consciously so or not, but it may be hard to tell how much is based on Conan itself and how much is only similar due to sharing the same inspiration.

no, todd said that conan was one of the influences. vikings and such are what they style to nords after, but the idea from SK was in some big way inspired by conan, which is sad because I thought the series was High Fantasy (or not, depending on how you RP'ed) but the defacto seemed better than something that would be inspired by an arnold swartzanaeger movie in which he said almost as much as he wore.

This, Todd has directly said they were influence by Conan for Skyrim, and were aiming for a less "Renaissance fair" style of RPG and more of a low fantasy vibe. Even Morrowind was mentioned to have been influenced by Conan (along with the movie Gladiator, as I recall from the same quote.)

TES is a high fantasy series, having elves, dwarves, and magic being a common, everyday event. But, most RPGs these days are of that flavor, so I can only think that w/e low fantasy elements they introduce are a good thing. Not every warrior needs to have a +5 cloak of the mongoose and magical Flame Sword.

However, the "Conan" Todd mentioned is hopefully not ONLY the movies, but the original stories, which are actually older than the works of Tolkien.

I think there is too much magic in TES for it to be that heavily influenced by Conan. The world of conan is very low magic. There are only a few magic weilders - but they are very powerful. I can remember a specific story of conan weilding a magical sword or magical armour (although there were magical artifacts - again usually of immense power). Making tes is a cold enviroment does not make it conan style eitther. Conan is set in numerous loactions - norther europe conditions, the more traditional forest, arabian desert theme, jungles/savanna like in africa, and evfen the high seas with pirating. I dont think making the game gritty is enough to call it like conan and I think they can only claim a mild inflence at best.

This is fine as both are two different worlds and I am playing tes, not conan.

I've read all of REH's work, love it. Hoping for a similar vibe from Skyrim as well. :thumbsup:



Nothing against Arnie, but the movie Conan is a pale shadow of the Conan as written by REH. You can find most of the books online if you are interested in finding out who the true Conan is.

I watched Conan the Barbarian just last night, ( not sure how accurate the movie was to the books though) but could not help but think a little of Skyrim with some of the images. Like the the Game Informer screen shots with the Barbarian looking Nord( would think he was) dressed up similar to Arnold's character with a very Conan like Sword on his back.

I think some influences from it would be OK just like with Beowolf and viking culture. However the most important thing to me is that they are just influences and that Bethesda makes Skyrim as they see it best fit and makes something unique. So far I like the grittier look in the screens and trailer for this game a barbarian/viking style melee character will me fun to play.

REH's Conan didn't make it into the Conan movie(s). Conan is a rather amoral person (take no crap, steal, murder, potential r@pist, etc). His world is closer to our own with some fantastic situations and characters (spirits, enchanted items, wizards, ghosts, monsters) thrown in. More assassins, dark mages, political intrigue, and stuff. Pretty distant from MW's bizzarro world and OB's 13th century Western Europe.

Howard already mentioned Conan influencing Skyrim and I can already see it from the trailer to the way your character looks. I'm actually glad cause its great material the original REH stories are and they cover deserts, jungles, rolling plains, and of course snowy peaks.

I'm wondering if there will be any Fire and Ice references. Its an old cartoon film I found from the 80s on youtube. Kind of fits the theme in a way. Well with manly warriors fighting neanderthal like men(This is how I think orcs should look like).

I'll assume you mean Todd Howard, the head designer of Skyrim, and not Robert E. Howard, the creator of the original Conan character. I actually forgot they had the same last name.

@Mumatil...the first time I saw clips of that were for a youtube video of Amon Amarth's song "Bleed For Ancient Gods." It was http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUMo2yQuzD4.

Well, first of all, i dont think "low fantasy" exists. What Todd meant is that Skyrim is a low tech kind of place, where magic stands out. Sword and sorcery is not that, necessarily. Theres no correlation between a pre-historic, Hyborean type of setting and sword and sorcery. You can make a high fantasy, medieval kind of thing and still fall under sword and sorcery. It all depends on context, tone, and how character development is done.

Howard did say there's a bit of Conan in the game (I mean, the shirtless Dovakiin with a zweihander on his back is very conan-ish). But theres SOME Conan in all Elder Scrolls. Elder Scrolls has always been more sword and sorcery than anything else (which is normal cuz that was the kind of mentality of RPGs back in the 90s...more or less).

part of me wonders why they even need to derive "influences" so much so from other avenues when TES is RIPE with its own flavors and foundations to run with and make something TES.....not Fing Conan or Lotr

I actually wanted to start a whole thread called "High/Low Fantasy" just because people tend to throw the terms around and often meaning the exact opposite of what they say. Part of that has to do with the fact that it is very blurry line between high and low fantasy. As an example.

Conan is almost always put in the low fantasy side of the argument. The big idea here is that the setting is a prehistoric, but very much our planet Earth as a setting. Magic is rare, and most stories are on a simple scale, ie robbing a temple of an artifact, rather than stopping an Evil Wizard from taking over the world.

The opposite of this is LotR, which is typically seen as "high fantasy." You have many different species (humans, elves, dwarves, hobbits) existing in a complex political environment, ie "the elves and dwarves have been at war for thousands of years." Magic is commonplace, if you aren't a wizard you probably know one. The stories tend to deal with world changing events, ie, Good vs Evil.

Now, here's where it gets complicated. Although supposedly "rare," magic of some type occurs in most Conan stories. And although most of the "evil wizards" are local baddies, there are certainly a few who try for something like world domination. What I like about those cases though, is they usually conspire with human allies (kings, princes, etc) and use their powers to expediate what would otherwise be normal military conquests.

On the other hand, Tolkien insisted that "Middle Earth" really was our earth, just in the distant path, even with all those mythical races.

So you can see how the two genre's tend to get mixed and matched a lot. It's really hard to define. Generally though, if you have any society of mythical creatures living alongside humans, high fantasy. An exception can be made for dying races which only a few people have witnessed. But when elves, dwarves, and humans get together to form a political sub-committee, that's high fantasy.

Im sorry, but the thing is Im an avid fantasy reader, and theres no such thing as low fantasy. The "low" in the low fantasy thing you are describing is not the "opposite" of high fantasy. High fantasy is so termed because it is sort of arthurean, based on an epic, out of this world sort of quest, and usually involves a coming of age story set in a medieval setting (meaning by medieval a chivalrous kind of place, with feudal structures).

The reason Conan , which is sword and sorcery, doesnt save the world, or that there no over the top, fireball spewing kind of magic, is more a device Robert Howard used than a genre thing. Howard always wants to keep you guessing if magic is real or not (although many times it is of course very very real, and very creepy), or if the gods exist or not. He wants to blur the line between wants confortable, and whats simply inhuman and completely savage in its nature (in a divine sort of way). He did that a lot in Solomon Kane: magic was always this thing that happened on the borders of civilization.

As for not battling the Evil Wizard (which he did in any case, his nemesis being Toth Amon) to save the world, well, this is where sword and sorcery is a thing of its own. Its a pulp genre in its heart, so with that comes a certain direction. In sword and sorcery, its usually the story of a lone anti-hero, and its more of a personal adventure than a chronicle of a setting (like in Middle Earth).

Now, I disagree with your view of LOTR. Wizards were not commonplace at all, and magic was a sort of artistic thing. Before the War of the Ring, mankind thought hobbits were fairy tales, and most have never seen elves and in some places people might not even think they exist. So LOTR, paradoxically, is different in this respect to the D&D craze it originated.

EDIT: I actually looked it up in wikipedia...and the concept is simply laughable. Its a made up genre that some crackpot book journalist came up with. The things that are considered "low fantasy" its simply fantasy! This is a crazy term that has no content, and that wikipedia article places under low fantasy things that are already classified, even by the authors themselves. So this is a completely unnecessary category that completely confuses an authors personal literary devices with an actual subgenre. Insane.

I kinda interpret low fantasy by the test: "Would the world still work if magic and monsters didn't exist?". In Conan and Kull I'd say 'yes'. In LOTR and ES I'd say 'no'. The more divine/fantastic/supernatural forces involved the higher the fantasy.

Well, I have to respectfully disagree. I maintain that while the "categories" of high and low fantasy are certainly not exclusive, there is definitely a distinction between the two genres.

I will also admit that my knowledge of LotR is spotty at best. The reason for that being is that I don't care for the setting much at all, whereas I've read each Conan story 2 or 3 times each. To me, this suggests, even anecdotally, that there is a difference. LotR has plenty of swordplay, and Conan has plenty of magic, so there's no reason I shouldn't enjoy both. And although I'm sure if push came to shove I might read the Ring series, I absolutely detest anything by RA Salvatore, which I find even more abstract in it's fantasy tropes.

Obviously part of it has to do with the writing style, REH tried to write stories "like a boxing match" where you felt each swipe of the sword. Tolkien's work is a little more lofty, and tends to dwell on other topics rather than down and out action. But a lot of it also has to do with suspension of belief. It's just easier to believe in a pre-historic human barbarian, who occasionally deals with supernatural phenomenon (which have in some cases been explained as unknown forces that exist in our own universe, namely otherwordly sentient life) than a complex society of mythical races where magic which is a substance in it's own right, rather than a collection of mysticism, alchemy, astrology, etc.

I'll have to agree with Keltic Viking on this one. In Conan's Hyborian world (which is also a pseudo-prehistory) the magic is a subtle and secret art. The physical gods have waned and the non-human races have degenerated into mindless beast dwelling in the depths of the mountains. Tolkiens world still has a strong connection with its mythic past and some of the (demi)gods have a strong influence on the world. Nevertheless I would not say that Conan is the extreme form of Low Fantasy and neither is Lotr the extreme form of High Fantasy. Anything having to do with genre-classifications should not be taken too seriously. The borders are fluid to say the least. I do not read that much High Fantasy (because I do not fancy it very much) so I am unable to give an good example of it. Yet I can say with confidence that Skyrim will probably have much more of those High Fantasy Elements than Conan (like Dragons for instance).

On a sidenote, I think it is interesting that they will release the new Conan movie this August. I can imagine it boosting the sales for Skyrim as nerds much like me want to have their barbarism-fix after seeing the movie. Also Game of Thrones is coming out in April on HBO, I bet that won't hurt the Skyrimania either.