Wait, so there *was* a covenant between Alessia and Akatosh? I thought all that was BS; just the imperials giving divine right to their rule?

You do realise that you're in Bethesda's TES lore forum, right? :rolleyes:

Anyway, I don't believe I was ranting about the jungle there. I was ranting about Talos, and how much he svcks.



I never thought of that. I think Bethesda take their own lore too close to heart. I want to see people lieing throughout the lore. I'd like inaccurate books about vague details, or people talking complete crap that turns into widely accepted knowledge (like the potential for this). It would be nice, imo.

Buhwhat? I'm pretty close to Shangri-Lore, but even I'm hardpressed to think of a definitive in-game source about anything. OOC comments, sure, but they hardly count.

Granted, Redguard-through-Morrowind was superior in metaphysical/cultural world-building than Oblivion, and getting Tamriel closer to Glorantha, Ambergris, and Viriconium (to name just three of the best fantasy worlds out there)... but I don't see a gap so wide as the one you're crying foul on.

Things that, now that I'm older, I appreciate very much about Oblivion:

1) The singlemost awesome thing about it: that the Emperor was named Martin. Take that, Fantasy Tropes.

2) Pelinal. Sure, it was an add-on, so maybe it doesn't count. Maybe I'm also biased, but that's impossible.

3) Infiltrating the Mythic Dawn. I was tense, paranoid, and in a police procedural. Mankar was lying, wasn't he? Wasn't he?

4) Sancre Tor. Okay, so just what the hell is up with the Underking and Talos? For non-lore buffs, it's a fun space, with enough context to give it some measure of gravitas in the greater scheme of Cyrodiil's history. For lore buffs, who pay really close attention, this thing is exactly what you want it to be, Hircine-- is the Arcturian Heresy bogus? What's up with the Oversoul if this quest is happening? Wait, Reman's legendary heritage... am I actually inside the womb that carried him?

I ain't got no 5. If I could transplant one "easy" thing into in-game Cyrodiil it would be the cohesive-in-theme monster set from SI over to OBL's own very, very old skool checklist.

-M

Long-assed footnote critique of SI: The monster set is about all I'd carry over from SI, unless the whole thing was tucked away into the initial release of OBL. Its placement as an expansion was a very poor narrative decision. It should have been entwined into the MQ from the start; same with the commitment to show another side of Hell outside of Booga Booga Inferno. As an ostensible epilogue to the game (the date of it being brought to market dooms it to this, as does its title "Official Exansion", no matter the fact that you can install and play at any time)... it strikes so many wrong chords that it honestly becomes almost malicious to the main game, and plot, that birthed it.

Amazing.

I KNEW that wasn't "ectoplasm" I was stepping in.

So it was more than re-entering the stitch for the tool the doctor forgot? My suspicions were correct. The pc died and came out the shezarrine.

I don't understand

It means the story was poorly told.

Ahhhhhhh.

Ok.

Wild lol's.

It's a TES game, right?

lol yes. Yes it is.

I shall stand by my guns when I say that - though Bethesda was developing it's game off of an experimental and young console, where there were no previous installments that even attempted to even come close to what Bethesda was trying to achieve - if indeed a retcon, it was a poor retcon that most certainly could not have been as severe as it was.

Wait, what? Damn... I thought I was playing Sonic... :sadvaultboy:

Hircine plays Sonic? That's not very macho.

It's what I do after a hard day's hunt. ^_^

(on my Sega Megadrive, of course)

Sonic is cool, don't be burning on Sonic!

Cyrodiil's landscape is a two-part problem: first, the whole debate of "there are sources stating that it's a jungle (clarified somewhere to indeed be tropical-like), so why is it a temperate forest?", and second, the way the developers just used the CS's automagic object-placer to get more or less all of the landscape down (aside from the landmass which was done with a relatively simple heightmapping tool built in the CS). Sure, it's one thing to all of a sudden decide you want a temperate climate instead of a tropical one, which would alienate some people, but they still could have made it just as interesting as the tropical setting would've been. But all I see is auto-grass, auto-trees, and auto-shrubs, with some manually placed caves and dungeons randomly scattered throughout. Hell, I see some actually really interesting foliage and groundcover along the road outside my apartment, and this is in a temperate inland location. There's no reason Bethesda couldn't have gone outside (hey, it's good for you), paid a little attention, and noticed that the nature around them actually had a lot to it. Instead they said, "okay, so we know we need trees, bushes, and grass... fire up the random object placement tool!"

Yay for speed tree. Individually placing objects in a 3d environment is a total [censored]. It takes forever, is a royally boring, draining, pain in the ass, and the drudgery can make you rather predictable. I would not want any dev to have to place the trees individually, since it'd be so boring.

Probably because they (the devs) wanted to throw a dragon into the game somewhere. :shrug:

I hope everyone realizes that all of the anti-Oblivion complaints mirror the anti-Morrowind complaints after that game came out.

-Dumbed down combat
-Conflicting lore
-Un-engrossing story
-Bad NPCs
-Smaller world
-Less-involved quests

It's all one big cycle of people idolizing the forerunners and scoffing at the sequels, and I'll bet my bottom dollar that TES: V will be received in the exact same way TES: III and IV were, with people saying how wonderful Morrowind/Oblivion was compared to it.

Just be happy with the improvements in each game (which there are many) and shrug off the low points. Enjoy the games for what they are.

But maybe young folks like you should try some new ideas. Could be messy. But change is never pretty. -Wulf

So just enjoy your generic landscape, fresh off the conveyer belt?

Funny really. You complain about people complaining and argue that they shouldn't because it's the same thing every game, since at every game we have people complaining about the complaining and so by your argument you shouldn't because it's the same thing every game. Maybe you should just shurg off the low points of these discussions.

Well put.

I simply have a reasonable understanding of the pains involved in populating a worldspace. Hand-placing everything is incredibly inefficient, and boring.

Indeed it is. But their automatic object placement tool isn't all too elegant. It can only give you a very rough starting point at best, and you'll need to polish it a lot from there. (Or, if you know enough about the format of esp files, write your own utility that does it in a more sophisticated way to reduce the amount of manual polishing afterwards.) But it doesn't even look like they bothered polishing it much - just used the placement tool and called it done. (The Bethesda devs claimed to have visited the University of Maryland to learn a bit about how forests grow and whatnot, but I really don't see any of that, unless it was information one would've gotten from a low-level college course at best, more likely high school-level.) Thus there isn't really any point to explore the landscape, and when in the main worldspace, your focus should be to just get from point A to point B in the straightest (and therefore fastest) line possible, and trying to get as close as you can by fast travelling to a nearby discovered location before hiking. You could also look at Crysis. Yeah, the devs poured probably way too much of their budget into graphical prowess, but that's not exactly the point. I can't actually say I know much about how the CryEngine editor works (other than they do include "object brushes" to let you place a bunch of trees etc. easily, not sure what else), but there's no way they placed all that vegetation, tree by tree/bush by bush/etc by hand. And even with their automation of the process, and the CryEngine's DX10 renderer and loads of shaders aside, the vegetation is still a damn sight better than the supposed-to-be-dense-but-isn't-really Great Forest. Yeah, Crysis takes place on a jungled island which are well known to have very thick foliage, but temperate woodlands actually get comparatively thick.