Who would know? Yes indeed, who would know what is going in the council room. Certainly not the player, certainly not the audience. It's simply not in the game. You keep repeating your argument that things happen behind closed doors, but even in the games there is no indication that anything actually happens.

In this sense it's ironic that you mention Morrowinds NPC's that hardly ever moved, because by your reasoning you'd at least expect to see people enter the council room to come and see Ocato. But neigh, not even a messenger!
But I can't really complain about this. The AI is part of the gameplay and doesn't have any implications on lore. Unless you happen to have a humorous explanation on the sudden development of this schedule, making people do things they've never done before. Come, make us laugh some more!

Despite your quote by quote, you get to the point. Why do you think it is acceptable to set a game in the capital of the Empire, but forgo the dynamic political structure that the place is known for?
Now you are wondering why I keep asking your this? Why I condemn Oblivion for it? The thing is I don't. The game just lacks a proper setting, something the previous games do have. This seem to offend you, but pointing out trivial mistakes and omission,s won't make a huge part of the game appear.

So you have a choice. Either accept that Oblivion's setting does not properly represent Cyrodiil or offer up an argument as to why a game should forgo the established setting in favour of something else.

Nolius Atrius wasn't in the game, we know. It would have been nice for him to have been there.

Same for the entire imperial bureaucracy at Cyrodiil, too.

There were House reps in the halls at Ebonheart in Morrowind. They just stood around and did nothing. One or two paltry lines of dialogue explained what they were. That was nice. It was better than nothing.

The devs just didn't bother in this regard.

But we've never seen them eat or sleep, but nobody ever makes assumptions that they simply don't eat or sleep. Bethesda was not limited by some gameplay limitations; they set those limitations, just as they made the lore. As for AI, it wasn't beyond Bethesda's ability to have made TES III where the NPC's have a simple day-night schedule. Just as it wasn't beyond their ability to have the Elder Council meet and argue about the same thing over and over again without getting anything done (just like us) behind locked doors. The lore wasn't limited by the game, because both were made by the same people, they chose not to implement certain things in the game.


Aside from the fact that not every nation can have as much assassination and warring as Morrowind, what would we see? The current politics concern the provinces more than Cyrodiil, those are where the politics are played out, even if they meet in Cyrodiil.


Our ideas of "proper" are obviously different and incompatible

So what is it that you do base your proper vision on? Can it even be found in lore?

Thanks for the invitation, but there isn't much I can add to this discussion, during which you have defended several contradicting positions and tried to change the subject more than once, accusing others for hating Oblivion and bringing in unrelated complaints about earlier games. This is a kind of sophistry, and you're not terribly good at it. If the central issue here is that you like Oblivion for the things somebody else dislikes about it, I can only say the taste is not a thing to discuss.

My idea of "proper" is whatever Bethesda chooses for their own creations. Likewise, it doesn't consider Morrowind improper despite the change in scale from Daggerfall, which, although more related to gameplay, does have quite a few implications on the lore.


Varying, yes. Contradicting, no.

I do not believe you. You've been making arguments to show that Oblivion did have politics. In doing so you you made up events, imagined them to happen in place we couldn't observe. If you were fine with Oblivion's departure from the established setting, you wouldn't have to make those arguments. You should have been making arguments to justify a change. Not pretend it isn't there.

So perhaps it is your faith in Bethesda that lets you suspend your rational judgement. Even though the people working for Bethesda created the world and Oblivion, it's dishonest not to call them on it when they do a poor job at recreating the image that they and their predecessors have been painting for several years.

So perhaps the reason you entertain us with your sophistry is because you don't like people who give you the idea that Oblivion isn't quite so good.
I can understand that, people do it everywhere on the internet, but can you at least let that attitude go here? Most people here have read and understood the most complex details of the world. I doubt you can find more dedicated people then in the lore forum, however even especially they can see when something is missing.



You really should elaborate on those implications! While you are at it, elaborate on the implications of two-dimensional people in High Rock and how this fact has eluded people elsewhere in Tamriel for ages.

I understand it can be considered "making excuses" but I until we get something else, I'm just trying to find a rational in-game explanation. Not everything can be explained in this manner, but many things can, and it's better than just blaming everything on the makers of the game. And as I've said, it's what we got, we should make the most of it.

Bethesda owns the rights to Elder Scrolls. I understand that it's frequently changing, but it's all made up by Bethesda. Even when I disagree with some of the choices that they make, it's their games and their right to do with them as they will. I got no business telling them that they're "doing it wrong" even if it is inconsistent with previous information, because it's whatever they choose to make of it.


It's not the graphics, it's the thousands of settlements and dozens of factions in Daggerfall. Morrowind on the other hand had a few unique settlements and factions. Big difference.

None of these things were done in the spare pf the moment. The sneakier leaders often considered the wider benefits that a war would bring. The USA and USSR did not simply join together ina happy cheerful alliance and Help the European nations out of Altruism. The soviets were starving, and an expansion into Europe, in the guise of liberators, allowed the Soviet troops to live off foreign food and goods when they captured the east european countries, as well as providing a trojan permanent army of occupation. And as for the USA, believe me it was a race to try and take Germany before the Soviets did. Even when they were both officially on the same side, the US carried out assasinations on top Soviet Officers. Just because the present crisis appears to be all encompassing, throwing every mortal into the same boat, doesn't mean that unscrupulous political schemers will suddenly become one-dimensional patriots. If anything, the worst of them will use the war as a smokescreen to carry out even more ambitions machinations. There was no evidence of this amongst the invisible elder council or the Cyrodiilic counts.

What positions would we see people aiming for though? With the invasion, the only way to get approved as Emperor would be to be able to wear the Amulet of Kings so that the Dragonfires could be lit, and everybody who had it throughout the crisis knew that there was another heir anyway. Of course, the position for Count of Kvatch is vacant, but it's not much of a position at the time, nor does it seem like much of a priority to fill at the time.

Who said anything about positions? People have agendas for different things, it could be influence, it could be money, it could be any number of things. Not all advancement invloves "Ching! You gained a rank!".

We had a guard captain overcharging criminals and keeping the money behind Count Indarys (who got his position due to his connections with Helseth), a castle mage stealing the portrait of the late Count of Chorrol, the Count of Anvil wanting to regain his identity, a necromancer working for Count Hassildor, probably to gain influence with him, and Countess Caro seeking to change Leyawiin to her liking. And that's just for the counts.

None of which had any importance or significance outside of the player's level-scaled quest reward. It all could have believably happened in Fable 2 of Final Fantasy.

This isn't all about fetch quests.

Not all goings-on in the castles affect the rest of the world. Or are themselves visibly affected by what's going on in the world. Life goes on, even in a crisis.

They can choose, we can criticize. You however seem to be in the business of telling other people Bethesda can do no wrong. Why?



Not really. It's about representation. The game can represent another world, it can represent it's people, it can represent cultures. It could also try to represent every little hamlet but when creating the atmosphere of a world those aren't terribly important. I suspect this is also the reason you still haven't given any examples of the lore implications of Morrowinds scale or those of the other game play aspects I've asked you about in the course of this discussion. There are none.



You imply some things do affect the world outside the players quest. You however failed to provide any significant examples.
You can stop trying to find rational in-game explanation, because what ever cause there is for it, does not come from within the game. Or the very least you could acknowledge that there is indeed a mistake, and make something up in an other thread.

Read Proweler's response, but that's not what I was going for. None of those events had anything to do with a particular atmosphere or vision. They had nothing to do with what Cyrodiil, as represented by the game, is supposed to be, and how we are supposed to feel about it. And this is a direct result of Bethesda focusing on making more creative, focused quests that are fewer in number and less relevant to the setting than what Morrowind had to offer.

And Todd Howard has specifically mentioned what I said about quests, so don't bother painting my remarks as a diabolical smear campaign this time around.

Morrowind had no shortage of irrelevant quests either. And both just show that some things just aren't a part of a bigger in-game story.


I'm not saying that they can do no wrong, I'm saying that we aren't in any position to accuse them of doing wrong. It's not real, it's all made up; the only ones who can determine if it was "wrong" or not are those who made it.


Morrowind wasn't randomly generated, it was made with great detail. It is highly unlikely that such a painstakingly crafted world could be a "representation," especially when there were all sizes of unique and distinct settlements, from Vivec City to fishing villages. And there was no evidence to suggest that there was more than that which was seen.

As for lore implications, the Temple did not have cults or groups dedicated to each of the saints or something of that nature. And let's not forget the appearance of Imperials, even if they may have appeared in Redguard prior to Morrowind.


And your explanation of how Imperials suddenly appeared and how the world shrunk down is in the game? Why is it that only Oblivion's inconsistencies are "mistakes" while the others are all "representation"? Why can't Cyrodiil be explained with "representation" like everything else in TES can?

imperials appeared the same way americans, mexicans, and nigerians did: the people were there all along, they were just given a new name.

as for the temple: there are two cantons in vivec named for the saints, and saints have triloths at which people worship. numerous religious books talk of their lives and their teachings. cyrodiil makes passing reference to alessia, pelinal, and morihaus, and much of that wasnt around before KotN. even the mythic dawn's religion was largely ignored, despite the huge role they played in the whole thing :shakehead:

so, wait, youre saying morrowind is exactly what it seems? and that oblivion should be excused because it was procedurally generated? games are and always will be just representations, unless you believe that there are self sustaining villages made up of three huts filled with people who all say the same thing.

How is that at all connected to what I said? Of course Morrowind has miscellaneous quests. Its faction quests were relevant, however. Oblivion has hardly any relevant quests at all, which is understandable since it barely had factions, just extracurricular activity clubs.




Imperial is just another word for the Cyro-Nordics, introduced in Redguard, filling in the empty space that Daggerfall never explained. Learn your lore.

Morrowind also made Argonians playable for the first time. Are you going to complain about that?

In the context of this discussion you can substitute any word from http://dictionary.reference.com/dic?q=wrong&search=search or http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/wrong list for "wrong" when it applies. We're in a position to call it wrong because the aim is to create an experience of another world, when it fails to create the feeling that we are indeed in another world, then it's wrong.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madurodam, a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miniature_park is a painstakingly crafted world, it was made with great detail, it is highly unlikely that such a painstakingly crafted world could be a "representation," especially when there are all sizes of unique and distinct cities. Never mind that the buildings don't reach above my knee.



How are those caused by gameplay?



C'mon, don't put up an other strawman. I have consistently been saying that things such as the "sudden" appearance of Imperials, the scale of the game (the world didn't change size), and other such things are not caused by lore and have no implications on it. Neither are we talking about Oblivion's internal inconsistencies.

What we are talking about is Oblivions failure to create an atmosphere that is consistent with the image (a representation) that the previous games have created and what one would expect from the Capital of the Empire. This includes an absence of any sort of detailed political and social structure, this includes the way each quest line is isolated from the world. It's these things amongst others that blow live into the world. These parts are decidedly not gameplay because they tell a story, they show us the nature of the Imperial.

I think you mean Orcs, right...?

Relevant? Relevant to what, the main quest? What would a non-linear game be if everything was connected to that main quest? And as I remember, only three factions were relevant to the main questline, and you could only belong to one of them at a time without glitches.


I'm well aware of their introduction in Redguard. But note that Redguard is not Daggerfall As for the Argonians, as ThatOneGuy said, it's orcs that became playable, and they were already in the game.


Let me go over it again.

TES is all made up. It's not real. And Bethesda owns it, so they have the right to do whatever they want with it. And at the end of the day, only they can judge whether they feel they were "right" or "wrong" because they were the ones who made it.

And just because you didn't feel it was the experience of another world doesn't mean that everyone felt the same.


That's nothing like Morrowind. Vvardenfell was a very small island with life-sized buildings, trees, people, flora, fauna, and a low population count.


No, it is contradictory to previous lore, Cyrodiil was previously said to have no native race. And if Morrowind is a representation, it's still inconsistent with how Daggerfall was portrayed because every inch of Morrowind is crafted in detail, leaving no room for hundreds or thousands of imagined unimportant settlements with no relevance.


As I've made clear, I strongly disagree with your anolysis of Cyrodiil's shortcomings.

So it is not possible to have a valid opinion of art, fiction, or entertainment because someone holds a copyright? Together with your continual attempts to frame the argument in such narrow ways that your sophistry can be applied, that fully shows how futile this thread is.

Your idea of an author's relationship to their creation is seriously naive, CP. It isn't so simple as you put, and is not based on the arrogant idea of supremacy of the author to do whatever they want. The author has innate authority, but a good author should never have to wield their authority. The consistency and integrity of the creation hold their authority to be true and inscrutable. Once you create a world, set the framework of rules to it, supported by precedent, turning on it is a betrayal.

It boils down to this; we can criticize gamesas all we want, becuase we care about the creation just as much, or even more than, they do.

- If Tolkien had just copped out, in his 14th year of writing LotR, and simply let Frodo ride Gwaihir to Mt. Doom, this would have been a betrayal of his talents, his own work and his fans.

There are certain aspects of Oblivion wherein similar sentiments have been felt, more acutely by the loreophiles, I think.

Vvardenfell is supposedly hundreds of miles in size. yet it is only six miles in the game. Much as one can imagine the miniature cities represent life size cities, its still down to what the game represents. The factions of Morrowind are as static as those of Oblivion, no faction ever moves and overtakes another in a real way, but the dialogue and quests create this image of a power struggle. Oblivion, however much a good game it may be, failed to represent this power struggle.