Not to mention the civilized half.

If you wandered Molag Amur and the Grazelands, you'd see a lot of wandering Daedra. They aren't seen in the other regions, but those regions, as well as Sheograd, contain the occasional wandering Daedra.


Perhaps they're saving it for a future game.



The story was an essential part of the game, but not as essential as the gameplay. They're merely not telling a story, they're making a game with a great story. But story isn't the main part of the game; the open-ended, non-linear gameplay is. If the story was all that mattered, the game would have been linear.

That's why you start out in the WESTERN half of the island, near the more Imperalized towns (Balmora, Pelagaid, Seyda Neen, etc.). If you don't know where you're going, it takes a long time to get to the Sheogorad/Tel Vos region. In fact, I distinctly remember having to hop on about 3 different boats (starting in Vivec) to even get to Tel Vos.

My point is, most people who start out in Morrowind and don't know where all the Daedra are don't end up finding them wandering around in the wilderness because the wilderness they occupy is hard to get to. Either it's a long walk, or a series of boat rides to get there, and I believe this was done by the Devs on purpose to prevent said ass-kicking by wandering Daedra.

Besides, the folks in Seyda Neen even go as far as to warn you about going out east!



A specific warning about the Daedra:



And look at this, they even elaborate more on that point:



Of course, if all else fails then there's always this:



All of these quotes can be found from talking to anybody in Seyda Neen. Granted, they might not show up the first time you click on "little secret" or "little advice" but I still think this illustrates my point that the game clearly tries to warn you AWAY from dangerous places when you're first starting out.

Exactly. As per my original point "In other words, your first [daedric] enounter is far more likely to be in ruins than it is to be in a wilderness where ruins are not even on the horizon."


Absolutely.

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/426/426475p1.html.

Consumers like familiarity. Since RPGs are so much about setting, they buy games where they think they will enjoy the setting. But to make that leap before a purchase, they need to be familiar with it. So, most consumers see a sword and sorcery-style game and they know what they're getting. They have a very good idea of the setting and the kinds of things they will get to do. People are familiar with Tolkien. They know they will enjoy it. People are not familiar with a brand new sci-fi setting that X game is making up; thus they might be less interested in buying it. At the same time you can do "familiar" sci-fi and "unfamiliar" sci-fi. Star Wars Galaxies is going to sell like mad, because everyone is familiar with that setting. Everyone wants to play in that world. The same is true for Star Trek, and a few others. There are even some modern settings that would be great for an RPG.

Compare this to M John Harrison's advice to a writer. Admittedly it has more to do with writing fantasy than it does to with making fantasy games, but still worth posting:

Hi, I got your book. You ask me how to make it different.

Substitute imagination for exhaustiveness, and inventiveness for research. As a reader I'm not interested in a "fully worked out" world. I'm not interested in "self consistency". I don't care what kind of underpants Iberian troops wore in 1812, or if I do I can find out about it for myself. I don't want the facts about the Silk Road or the collapse of the Greenland Colony, sugared up & presented in three-volumes as an imaginary world. I don't want to be talked through your enthusiasm for costume. I don't want be talked through anything.

When I read fantasy, I read for the bizarre, the wrenched, the undertone of difference & weirdness that defamiliarises the world I know. I want the taste of the writer's mind, I want to feel I'm walking about in the edges of the individual personality. I don't want to read a story misrepresented from some other culture's folklore, or a story in which western political & economic thinking of the last fifty years is presented as a mythic truth. Go read Clive Barker. Go read Kenneth Patchen, who was reportedly an unlikeable man but who could write you a fantasy in a couple of lines. Or put "The Gates of Eden" on repeat

"I am a clueless newb. Oh, a sort of goblin. [Actually a scamp. They do look like they could have been goblins.] It must be a normal, mundane, natural creature that is native to the region. Hey, why does it tell me my weapon is ineffective? What is it, some sort of alien demon from another world that is immune to non-magical weapons?"

In Oblivion, though, they're no longer resistant to mundane weapons. So you could argue that there is less contrast between fauna and flora because the game doesn't tell you they're magic beasties rather than normal creatures...

It has nothing to do with culture. In real life wildlife is not affected by culture, and the same is true in fictional worlds. The only animals that might be effected are culture are domesticated ones like dogs, the word you want is environment, I believe, or ecosystem, maybe, not that what we saw in Morrowind or Oblivion counts as a functional ecosystem.

But anyway, Daedra are NOT the only non-real lifeforms in Oblivion, have you ever seen a goblin or minotaur in real life? I doubt it, probably because they are product of people's imagination, not Bethesda's imagination, but the imagination of people who lived long ago. Now the reason why in Morrowind you see many made up animals while you see dear and wolves in Oblivion? Probably environment. Morrowind and Oblivion take place in very different environments, so likewise, the animals you see there are different, it's kind of like how if you live in the US but one day go to Australia the wildlife you see there will probably be different from what you are used to. Morrowind was a strange world different from ours in many ways, and just as the cultures native to it seemed strange compared to our own, so did the animals. Oblivion, on the other hand, is an inaccurate clone of Medieval Europe with cat and lizard people, likewise, we see many real world animals in it, and the fictional lifeforms we see in it are mostly based on common fantasy and mythological concepts, so we get trolls and minotaurs and goblins, as opposed to what we saw in Morrowind.

As for me, I prefer Morrowind's setting. My interest in fantasy comes from a desire to see a strange world, to an extent this applies to science-fiction to, but it is more so in regards to fantasy, because in science-fiction you are seeing a world of the future, or maybe what the world could have become if certain events turned out differently, therefore, or maybe it is some distant part of the universe, but in the end, it is a world derived from real life, I still want it to be different, I still want to see something new, but I also want a world that could plausibly exist, with fantasy, you are making a world that is completely fictional, and therefore, I want it to be different from what I know, I don't want to see an inaccurate copy of Medieval Europe with different names, I want something new, that is why I didn't just go and look for a work of historical fiction. Now I still want a believable world, one I can connect to, but that's why you put people in the world, and while you give them different culture from real world people, you still make them have believable actions, and you give them things that happen in the real world to think about even while they are busying themselves with killing alien monsters, even though the world they live in is not real I still see something I can connect to.



I could tell the difference fairly easily, the fact that all of Morrowind's fauna was non-humanoid, while most Daedra were at least vaguely humanoid helped, it helped further when you consider the fact that Daedra were immune to normal weapons, and besides, Morrowind'a fauna tended not to have any kind of armor or clothing or weapons, whereas Golden Saints and Dremora both had weapons, and most of them had Daedra hearts, that is a pretty telltale sign that they are Daedra, and then you see them in Daedric shrines, while animals tend to stay out of those places, I never once saw a Daedra and thought I was seeking any animal native to Vvardenfell.

Well, Splstheim ain't Morrowind.

Indeed; it was great getting off the boat in Seyda Neen and being processed then set loose with nothing but a package and a silver plate you nabbed from the customs office. Wondering where the [censored] you where, figuring out why everyone called you 'Outlander', what the giant flea did, what that talking lizard thing was...

Cyrodiil was like "Hi I'm the Emperor, you're very important, here's your mission, welcome to Italy". My first mudcrab encounter in Morrowind sent me running into a building to hide from this weird beast shuffling towards my unarmed self. In Oblivion it was a case of "oh, it's a little crab, oh, it's hurting me 1hp at a time, good thing I have all these weapons from that nice contrived tutorial dungeon they put me through before setting me loose in the gameworld!".

Still, there were a few Oblivion creatures I was wary of on first (and subsequent) encounters; notably the land dreugh and the ogre.

But until you figure out exactly what Daedra are and what they look like, what's a Daedra (aside from Dremora and Golden Saints) is anyone's guess. Especially if you took a silver or enchanted weapon when first exploring daedric ruins. Given Morrowind's bizarre fauna, Clannfears, Scamps, and Ogrims don't exactly contrast with Morrowind's mortal creatures.

To be quite honest with you, I fail to see your point in continuing with this issue. Albides and I have given very convincing arguments as to why the player WOULD know that those are, in fact, Daedra. Namely, the fact that:

A.) Most of the Daedric shrines are concentrated in the Eastern and Northern parts of the island, and we've already established that an inexperienced player probably wouldn't be going there right away because those areas are hard to get too unless you know where you're going.

B.) The game warns you against going to those places until you become more experienced (look at the in-game quotes i've posted; I could even post more than that, and all are common quotes that people in Seyda Neen can give you).

Hell, the Main Quest doesn't even force you into a Daedric Shrine until you're well into the story, and presumabley you'd know what the different kinds of Daedra are at that point. And even if you don't start the MQ, all other Faction and Misecellaneous Quests that send you into a Daedric Shrine always state that you're going to a Daedric Shrine; they never say, "You're going to go to this weird looking building and doing [insert task here]." And since they explicitly identify it AS a Daedric Shrine, one can reasonably assume that unless it's a Nix-hound, Rat, Alit, Guar, Scrib, Kwarma Forager, Kwarma Worker, Kwarma warrior, any of the playable races, or any of the other countless things you've already established to be non-Daedric sources of life....then it's probably a Daedra.

I don't see how I can make it any clearer than that.

But do people generally listen to the warnings of where not to go? Some do, some don't.

And given that most of the sources on Daedra don't accurately describe what they look like, what is and what isn't a daedra is anyone's guess at first. Heck, some sources don't even explain lesser and greater Daedra.

And last, player perception of what's a Daedra doesn't matter much because the Daedra still manage to fit in with Morrowind's other creatures quite well. And certainly more than when they're in Cyrodiil.

But the whole point about a sandbox game is exploring and discovering! You explore the lands, do some quests and talk to people and along the way you find out stuff. I came to Morrowind with no knowledge at all, I was just in the shop and thought "hmm lets try this RPG" as it had a nice backside on the box.

When I first started I had no clue what a deadra was. But was that a problem? I hiked to Balmora started to do some quests ect. It was not till I headed for Ald rhun that I found my first daedric ruin. Hmm my magic axe (naked nord on the way to ald rhun) made short work of the scamps. But the glass axe I found some levels later suddenly didnt work so... I ran. Figured magic was needed by myself and later heard from a NPC that other types of weapons would work aswell.
My point being? Part of the exploring is discovering how the world works, and hand holding almost exterminates that part of the fun. If some people need it, fine. But don't wreck the game because some people are to dumb to take cra. (insert p). See my sig.

Instead, implement some sort of optional tooltips or whatever that give this info that you can put on or off by tagging a box under options.

And yes it wasnt untill later that I found out atronarchs weren't just elementals with a tendency to hang around hellish creatures but part of the creatures emself. But that made it all the more fun.

Scamps I could give you, but clannfears and ogrims, definitely not. They're too brightly colored. You don't get those greens from any other creature in Morrowind, everything else is really desaturated a lot.

I think Crimson's right about the clannfears. They share the lizard/dinosaur concept with other "native" creature, namely Kagouti, Alit and Guar. They even have the big head! Although, I must admit that it is only the "crown" thingie that make them appear so.

As for Ogrims - On my first playthroughs I cared little for lore (I mostly ran around killing things with my Redguard warriors :shakehead: ), and well, I thought them to be nothing but Morrowinds version of Ogres. I mean, look at the name! And they're big! And green! I don't think I ever even noticed that they're resistant to normal weapons, as you were almost definitly sure to have a magic weapon when you encountered them. Especially since you can find magical one's in every other crate right from the start of the game. One think I've should have known better when they dropped Daedra hearts, but they, why stop to think when there's this big, funny looking statue just over those hills, and Orcs you can kill right next to it?

To the list of hard to tell creatures (for a beginner, at least) I must also add the hunger. Really. It looks like a common undead/tomb haunting thingie. Especially after doing that "Hunger in the grave"-quest for Balmora's Fighter's Guild, as it was the first time I saw that kind of Daedra.

As for others: Daedroth's looks quite reptilian-styled as well. Winged Twilights also fit in with the common theme of Morrowinds "natives" in style. Never thought these were "normal" creatures though, for some reason.

However, the point being: There are lots of Daedric creature's one might mistake for "normal" ones, if you do not care that much for lore.

Well you might not see it at first glance, but for all almost all of these the daedric hearth is a dead giveaway after you have killed it. And if you don't notice that you probably don't care (yet) anyway. So what's the harm then in leaving it less obvious?

To be honest, I don't care much about the "bigger contrast" argument that led to my post, I just wanted to point out that they do look similar. That being said, I still like Morrowind's concept better. While I'm not overly annoyed by Oblivions "standard" creatures, I still think it's better to make up "new" ones.

On another note: The Daedra hearts is a dead give away, that's true. But as I said (and I only speak for myself), I was far to busy killing things to care, in the beginning.
Come to think of it, many of the times I was to busy running away from those creatures to care about it. Not to mention that they don't drop any hearts while hunting you down and rearranging your backside.

:P Clannfears can be scary indeed when you first meet em :ph34r:
But my argument wasnt as much to rebuck you'rse, it was more using you're argument to show that the contrast deadric / non-daedric is not very relevent for anyone in te game (an earlier discussion). People who care will know or find out, other people will just kill :gun:

Besides finding out what is a deadric and what is not would not even be hard in oblivion if it did look alike. Anyone can figure that out; aslong as you have seen it in a daedric portal and it attempted to kill you, its daedric.

Actually, on the contrary, a quest involving ABC's for Barbarians actually makes it quite clear that a vast majority of people in Morrowind (and, for that matter, Tamriel) are literate due to the globalizing force of Imperial education, especially through the Mages Guild. So HA!

If you have enough septims, that is.

No it makes it clear that a lot of Dunmer does not read:





Though the people of the rest of the Empire might be more literate. Even though I do not like to admit it.

It's hard to guess at the literacy ratios. A lot of Dunmer homes have books in them, even commoners' homes. Often these books are religious - maybe sometimes the owner simply keeps them as votive objects. But that would only be speculation.

My personal guess is that literacy in Morrowind is low compared to modern day RL Western countries, but still higher than medieval times. Maybe 40%?