That's fine. We can all understand game limitations. Just that amount of effort placed in Oblivion's other "realisms" just happen to make it seem their choice of focus was ridiculous.

Vvardenfell didn't have that much farmland, it was only a few farms in the Ascadian Isles area. And there were people in Cyrodiil who did tend to fields. So please be more accurate when bashing Oblivion.

And aside from that, not every place has the same social hardships, nor the same magnitude of social hardships.

It isn't the kind of system where you can trade one thing for another. It's have/have not.

Take the bigotry elsewhere, thankyou.

Some places are utopian suburbs.

:whisper: (I'm from the states, so it's OK.)


Also, the "tradeoff" method is a tried and true method of making game engine limitations less detrimental to the story-world.

Examples: Wizardry 7. (Read the books in it some time.)

Who's many? Seriously. I can sort of understand if people didn't notice the general insect-and-reptile theme most of Morowind's fauna had, or that almost every daedra was at least somewhat anthropomorphic, and maybe mistook a clannfear for something in the order of an alit. Still, I'd like a head count of the people who didn't realise Daedra were almost always congregated around Daedric ruins and weren't ever encountered in the wilderness unless you're at a high enough level to know better. And Oblivion had the same thing. Daedra were almost exclusively found near and within the portals, near which skies inevitably turn crimson as if there is a big flashing light saying DANGER: DAEDRA NEARBY.

This also assumes I'm going to agree a contrast is even needed. If you want to go all medieval, in an age before the Discovery Channel and Jacques Costeau, then for most people, many animals would have been as strange and fabulous as the daedra. Take for example, the beaver,

"whose testicles make a capital medicine. For this reason, so Physologus says, when notices that he is being pursued by the hunter, he removes his own testicles with a bite, and casts them before the sportsman, and thus escapes by flight. What is more, if he should again happen to be chased by a second hunter, he lifts himself up and shows his members to him. And the latter, when he perceives the testicles to be missing, leaves the beaver alone."

This is also a lesson that "every man who inclines toward the commandment of God and who wants to live chastely, must cut off from himself all vices, all motions of lewdness, and must cast them from him in the Devil's face."

Or something as seemingly mundane as a stag who, "after a dinner of snake, they shed their coats and all their old age with them", an illustration of being "renovated" by vanquishing the snake and shedding an old age of sin. Or "Ursus the bear, connected with the word 'orsus' (a beginning). is said to get her name because she sculptures her brood with her mouth (ore). For they say these creatures produce a formless foetus, giving birth to something like a bit of pulp, and this the mother-bear arranges into the proper legs and arms by licking it."

Extreme examples, but it still impresses the need of recapturing that sense of wonder that Morrowind certainly had, that good fantasy, as a method of escapism, often has, instead of being stuck in a game that's so familiar, that the only wonder I experience is over how much thought was put into the setting. And I can't think of why anyone would be against a more imaginative setting.


Oh yeah, because "boring automaton" is just ghastly.


Lorus! Good to see you!

Unless you've played a TES game before or read the book that outlines daedra, there's really not much way to tell if they're daedra or simply more of Morrowind's bizarre fauna. After all, if they got flying jellyfish, octopus-men, and dinosaur-like bipeds as their normal fauna, then the daedra fit in pretty well. And lots of daedra wander the Grazelands and Molag Amur regions away from ruins.

Believe it or not, they contrast with the setting of Cyrodiil much more than Morrowind, even if the skies do turn red near a portal. Especially considering that the skies in Morrowind turned pink or red without daedric invasions.


Your comments on me have bordered flaming in the past, so watch what you say about others. I can live with bashing Oblivion (I'll debate it, but it's allowed and acceptable), but bashing other posters just isn't right.

Now you are making an outright argument that players should be allowed to be lazy about the world they are playing in.

When you're first introduced to Morrowind, without any prior TES knowledge, the information and lore given to you is overwhelming. It's easy to get confused and to take a lot of time before you understand everything.

[irony] You know, that is EXACTLY how I experienced morrowind [/irony]


you know the VERY first thing I did? I found an in-game book store, and *GASP* read the books!! Then I understood the world! *gasp*

Not everyone is a lore-seeker like you. Most people are more interested in the gameplay than the books. Else there'd be a lot more people on this forum.

You're right.

Let's all chill here.

IIRC, from my days in Morrowind Hardware, and Morrowind Spoilers before moving to Lore:


70% of the players felt they were totally justified swinging an axe around willy nilly, killing everything in sight.


If we catered the whole game to this 70% majority (gak), Morrowind would have had a "score count" for how many ordinators you had offed, and such foolishness.

the INTENT of morrowind was to TELL AN EPIC STORY, with YOU, the player, as a PART of said story.

I played the game logically. I saw a guy named "Guard", and realized I shouldn't stab that Fargoth guy because I'd get in major trouble. I didn't run in a random direction into the wilderness because I realized I was a weakling prisoner fresh off the boat. I didn't rush in to fight the bandits because I logically assumed they had weapons and were meaner and stronger than I was. The number of people I've heard about that simply got off the boat and started stabbing the first thing they saw is pretty sad.
I learned the lore by reading what NPC's said. Pretty easy, eh?

Bethesda isn't making a story, they're making open-ended games with epic stories. The free, do-anything-go-anywhere gameplay is the primary part, the enormous lore in TES III is the secondary part, even if it is a very important aspect.

Further, the % of those that felt they should have "Epic Skillz!" at doing so, and should be able to kill everything as soon as they got off the boat as well.




I think Zurin arctus would disagree with you... but I guess you would have to READ LORE to know that. OH WAIT! Yeah, THAT'S RIGHT! THE FREAKING QUOTE OF HIS IS ONLY IN THE DAMNED INTRO VIDEO!

What makes what I did even funnier is that I was 12 when I first played the game, and I managed to get a character (law abiding too!) to level 12 or so before he died to prematurely turning off the Xbox during saving.
So does this mean some players aren't as smart as a twelve year old?

Given the whole:


"Yeah, I just killed that Caius Cosades guy that the legion dood sed I needz to talk to, did I mess up?"

that I saw so many times I could PUKE--- Yes.

TES III is a game, not just an interactive story. Bethesda made TES III to make money, not to tell a story. If they wanted to tell a story, they wouldn't have spent all the effort in making TES III. It's far more than a story. Unless you either read the daedra book early or talk to one of the few who talks about the lesser daedra, it won't come by instantly.

It is not supposed to. People dont encounter daedra unless they go wandering around and go "Oh wow-- look at that REALLY odd looking building, with all the funky angles! I bet there is PHAT LUTE inside!" then go inside, and get "TOTALLY PWNED@! DAT SUXORZ!#@" by the daedra inside, until they reach oh--- LEVEL 20!


Also, it is VERY easy to destroy your argument. Why else do you think the whole "You have broken the thread of prophesy" thing pops up if you kill essential NPCs? HMM?? Could it be-- BECAUSE THEY ARE IMPORTANT TO THE STORY!?

No, that CANT be it. Of course not.

Very few wander far away from the ruins. Not enough to warrant the frequency of such encounters being more prevalent than that first time you enter into a daedric ruin and find monsters who rip your head off and you avoid until you're strong enough to give back. In other words, your first enounter is far more likely to be in ruins than it is to be in a wilderness where ruins are not even on horizon. I'd still love a headcount of those people who couldn't tell a dremora from a guar. And what with Morrowind's better implemented level scaling, the daedra are only gradually introduced to the character. And yes, I don't doubt there's a greater contrast in Oblivion than in Morrowind, but it's not a very big or meaningful contrast.


You say that like it's a bad thing. That sounds delightful.

I'm reminded of Moorcock's http://www.revolutionsf.com/article.php?id=953 comparing some types of fantasy to Winnie the Pooh, as literature meant to comfort the reader and reassure them in their own stolid values and mundanity.

I'd expect that from such a game with an extensive universe. And that's exactly what I got. Like Albides said, it's not a bad thing. If it was, you wouldn't see me on this forum.

Because Morrowind was designed to be more exotic and otherworldly than Oblivion was. Not completely outlandish and bizarre, but rather 'strange anologue'. An anologue is something that is similar to another thing in that it fills the same role or has similar properties. For example, the Emperor Parasol giant mushrooms are anologues of RL trees. The Guars, Rats, Alits, Nix-Hounds and so on are all fairly easy to equate roughly with RL animal niches, so they can be seen as (rough) anologues of RL animals. It's actually a theme that MW uses for almost everything - Dunmer culture, architecture, styles of pottery and woodworking, etc. By doing things this way the devs managed to create a game world that is both immediately understandable and credible to the player because it all fits together like RL things do, but it is is also exotic and original.

Oblivion was designed more with familiarity in mind. I personally think it was going on the theory of 'most people like seeing what they expect to see', and probably taking advantage of the Warcraft/LotR/Harry Potter 'Western' style of fantasy that was a strong presence in popular culture during Oblivion's development (probably the strongest that fantasy has ever been in pop culture). It too has its weird elements, but less of them than MW and less original ones than MW, and I don't see it as having an exotic core like MW.

Whichever you prefer, there's no good or bad to it really - it's all subjective and relative. Some people prefer one style, others prefer another. One man's 'exotic' is another man's 'goofy'. Likewise, one man's 'mundane' is another man's 'so [censored] what?'.

Personally, I prefer MW's style.

I still want my aboreal jungle damnit. With orchids, and jungle beasts.

Many Headed Talos my hairy pink butt!

yeah, well, i wantd to play TES IV in Hammerfell.

Impasse! :twirl: