Who said Tamriel is the size of Mauritania?

Seconded. This attitude is the death of creativity. Play it safe, go with the flow... no thanks. "Everyone knows Tolkien". Oh really? 90% of the people who claim they know Tolkien don't have the slightest idea what they are dealing with and believe it to be in the line of run-off-the-mill fantasy stories like those of Salvatore. People like things they are familiar with? I like stuff that challenges me. Things that I have to figure out. Morrowind was great with original concepts up to and including armour types, housing (the crab in Ald'Ruhn was something...) and even the instant transport possibility was draqed into a cool, strange concept. I think Todd Howard has it backwards when he states "At the same time, we made an effort to keep the classic fantasy setting of our "Imperial" culture, so that the player would see familiar things, which creates even more contrast against the unfamiliar." Yes, the contrast worked, but the other way round: It worked in establishing that it was the oh-so-familiar Imperial element that was actually alien in Morrowind. You could feel that they "were not supposed to be there". I felt much more comfortable in playing in the Dunmer towns than in imperial towns, which felt like a xenograft on the skin of Morrowind.

People like what they are familiar with? Then why did Planescape:Torment receive so many accolades? While it was a D&D setting, it was the most mature one existing at the time, and it was a roleplaying game that threw up philosophical questions like few others had and have since.

"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. " Thanks, if Chris Roberts had thought that way, there would never have been a Wing Commander series. And as RPGs go, we never would have had Deus Ex. Heck, anyone remember Skyrealms of Jorune: Alien Logic? As adventure-like as it was, the setting it borrowed from its pen&paper parent game was quite original.

I think trying to "play it safe" with the familiar in the end will backfire. Because people will notice the lack of originality and, pointing out that game design is supposed to be a creative business, balk at the lack of creativity.

I can second that.

I hope Bethesda DOES NOT drop the ball with the next TES game. Cyrodill could have been so amazing like Pandora in Avatar, I would have loved to see a wacky world like Pandora.

The PGE is definatley accurate aout Cyrodiil -- it was written there.


but it wasn't even entirely jungle. only what was the Great forest and south was supposed to be jungle. Basically, the terrain was supposed to be more diverse within Cyrodiil.

Naw, the Strident coast was jungled, as well. Marukh was from those jungles.

And you got it in TES IV: Shivering Isles.

Accolades don't necessarily translate to sales, and businesses require profit to keep functioning. While I don't have sales figures, a quick Google search suggests that PS:T didn't sell well, and common logic suggests that known money-makers get sequels or spinoffs, both of which PS:T is notably lacking. Sometimes you shouldn't blame businesses for playing it safe, but rather consumers for wanting more of the generic (or you can blame yourself for not being in lock-step with the masses).

Maybe there was a giant need for lumber in the time of Daggerfall-Oblivion?Maybe the Warp of the West affected Cyrodiil somehow

Thats not my point. In many books in Morrowind and Oblivion, they state that Cyrodiil is almost endless jungle. Really? What we got was a bland setting with trees.

Edit: Nevermind

Remember the point of view of the author for each item you quote. A writer from a desert or ashland would describe two trees together as a jungle. If you're being paid to describe the Imperial City, then its streets are paved with gold, and the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all the children are above average (or would be if there were any).

Just because it's written, doesn't mean it's true. And history is written by the winners, so the right side always comes out on top.

I completely agree. People here seem to take anything written within the games as solid truth or "lore" as they say. Just take a look at what's written today and you'll realise that not everything that is written has to be true or correctly described. A lot of things will be beutified.

Theres a pretty big gap between beautifying and bias and mistaking grassy plains for jungle.

And varying accounts on several parts of TES lore reflects that. However, when the Imperial city is stated to be on a chain of Islands and have moth priests walking around, i expect at least two Islands and at least one moth priest.

The first pocket guide.
So you scale a map of Tamriel so that Dagoth Ur and Almalexia are 250 miles from each other, and the square mileage comes to around 400,000.

Really? That's your argument? I agree that history is distorted by those who write it, but in this case, I think you're applying the idea incorrectly.

The Devs changed it: plain and simple. We can argue whatever we want to try to make it okay or retcon it so it becomes 'the new lore', but in the end, they went with what they thought would sell the best, and they were right. I would be willing to bet, from a business standpoint, Oblivion was much more successful than Morrowind. It doesn't matter that I enjoyed Morrowind more. They didn't ask me nor would my opinion affect their decisions.

Its fine

No, he wouldn't. He might describe it as a dense forest, if the concept of a forest is known to him. But between a dense forest and a jungle, there are significant differences.




But there's a difference between describing it in an embellished way and describing it in a fashion where people have to doubt you've ever been there.



Quite the contrary - you misunderstand the concept. Because history is written by the winner, the odds they faced are always described as larger than they actually were and their efforts as even more incredible than they were. "He went to Skyrim and crushed the puny Nord like the bugs they are" doesn't really sound like someone needed to be a great general to do this. Heck, the butcher boy can crush bugs. "He went to Skyrim, knowing very well that not just endless hordes of barbarians but the very land they lived in were waiting to bring him to an icy death. In the end, though thousands died on both sides, the Dragonfires proved stronger than the ice of the North" - that sounds like an achievement worthy of an emperor.

You guys forget the crap ton of Egg Mines scattered all over the place.

Caldera seemed to be the only big mining operation, but I've run across more than a few mines in the Grazelands. Populated by workers, too.

Yeah, there are a few Glass and Ebony mines out in the wilderness in Morrowind. Hard to find though (atleast not something you will find very easily).

I was referring to the egg mines when I meant out-of-business mines; a good deal of them were blighted, with aggressive workers and sometimes dead egg miners

Now, off of that, I noticed that many of the active mines in Morrowind were pretty far from the cities, with almost no evidence or suggestion that the ebony/glass being mined ever left the mine. Heck, one active mine was inside the Ghostfence in Red Mountain Region.

Edit: Also, I noticed something interesting about Cyrodiil; we know more about its history than we do Morrowind. We have books chronicling the Empires history, but Morrowind's history is pretty much left blank between the War of the First Council and the present day, with a few exceptions detailing the Armistice, the war with Reman (although most of what we know about that is historical fiction), and a few details regarding an Akaviri invasion of Morrowind in the Second Era.

We know about as much of Cyrodiil's history as we do Morrowind's. We have a year or two of the Alessian rebellion, then a tiny bit of the Order several hundred years later, then another snippet with Reman and the late 1st. Its not until the 3rd era that cyrodiil has anything resembling a comprehensive history, and even then most of it is contained in one series of books.

That article made me feel cheap and under appreciated as a CRPG gamer.

When imagination and fantasy becomes the domain of "consumer marketing", then the lowest common denominator wins.

It still doesn't have to be completely true as that scale isn't present in any of the released game. I find it hard to believe that Tamriel would be so small, especially considering all the different climates and environments.

As I said before , only becasue it's written it doesn't have to be true and som logical thinking tells me the size of the continent is greater than Mauretania.

I wish they made it more like they did in the lore...

Colovians being more warrior-like, Easterners being more prone to cults and odd customs, the ancestor moths, the river-based society, the conflicts between East and West, the unique clothing, tattoos, and other things of the East...

The whole thing seems like they didn't have the current technology to do so, so they just didn't.

---

I loaded up the game, clicked on rumors, and immediately a Nibenean woman said "I'm not saying Colovians are dumb... they're just hard headed.". Then I went to my favorite little Colovian town of Chorrol and spoke with the countess, and she talked about how her people were a proud, hard-working people. I starting asking for rumors around town, and somebody said "Nibeneans think they're slick... slippery is more like it."

The Fighters Guild is situated in Colovia, there's a Dark Elven Count in the East, in Nibenay they have the Dark Brotherhood, which is a very odd cult. Sure they don't have the odd clothes or the rainforests, but it's safe to say Oblivion didn't let the lore down too much, besides the geography, which is understandable. The people would be less opinionated, as they said in the Pocket Guide, if the Empire was strong, and we were at the height of its power in Oblivion.

After the events of The Infernal City, Colovians will withdraw into themselves (like described), and fight with the Nibeneans once again. They still have that underlying prejudice, but during the times of Oblivion it seems like the line between them was severely blurred. The Countess of Bruma mentions how "some only see the conflicts of Northern and Southern cultures, but I see the ways they can be woven together."

I wish they still had the tattoos and geography, but due to game mechanics I can see why they did it.

P.S. There are tons of moths around the Temple of the Ancestor Moths