And also, what made Oblivion lack culture is that all of these towns lacked any sort of interaction with each other. Sure, everyone talked about Kvatch and about how they'll bounce back and occasionally about how Kvatch had an arena or was invaded before... and yes, sure nobles talked about how THEY didn't joke about Bravil being an armpit.

But, they didn't talk about the hole that Kvatch left... about how they'll miss going to that arena, about how their favorite jeweler is gone because of Kvatch. Other people didn't actually joke about Bravil's poverty. That's not in the least to talk about any of the other towns and such... how there are five to seven major towns in and near western Cyrodiil and that they don't get any foot traffic, any commerce, any rumors, any built up anxieties about people from certain towns, about how Colovians are better than Nibeneans... I could go on and on and certainly I don't expect there to be EVERYTHING in there. But I want something to let me know that these people aren't islands.

For clarification, the towns I'm counting are Chorrol, Skingrad, Kvatch, Anvil, Rihad, another town west of Chorrol that I can't quite remember the name of right now, and possibly Sutch (though its existence is certainly questionable).

Everything in the Morrowind was rooted firmly to the ground, and its dialog system was too poorly-conceived (or was it poorly-executed?) to fulfill anything in this post. But ES games aren't civilization sims, and Morrowind's lack of dynamic trade caravans isn't really a fault, because it has something that Cyrodiil doesn't.

Let's see. Aside from the architectural influences in each province, each group I've mentioned has its own distinctive beliefs and morals. And the towns interact with each other more than in Morrowind. Heck, the people of the different towns in Morrowind are almost indistinguishible aside from Great House members.

And Cyrodiil isn't Morrowind, each town was distinctive, and there's nothing wrong with that.

And as was said in Morrowind, Cyrodiil is a melting pot of cultures. And I felt that the existing Colovian and Nibenese cultures were relatively well-defined, even with the differences in each town.

You described the most basic attitudes that people can have. It's kinda like saying that all the people in http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120789/are well... pleasant. Yet this forgoes the deeper layer that the people aren't all that pleasant but hide their emotions for the sake of appearing pleasant.

Oblivion doesn't have this deeper layer.



What is that even a reply too?



Ofcourse, contrary to the Anviltes or Skingradians one would expect in Oblivion because of the distinct towns, there are no Balmoreans or Khuulians, they're mostly Dunmer. I also think it's strange you mentions the eight towns and bring up a melting pot culture. Of a melting pot you would expect that you would see a mixture of everything including Imperial customs. Yet there are only eight heterogeneous towns without any sort of Imperial melting pot culture in it.

...

This is Cyrodiil, not Morrowind. We can't expect every province to be as treacherous and xenophobic as Morrowind. As a general rule, Imperials aren't as hostile as Dunmer. Even so, there still is racial tension going on in various places of Nibenay.

What is that even a reply too?



As I've said before, they're different combinations. Anvil has Hammerfell influences, Leyawiin has Argonia and Elsweyr influences, Bruma has Skyrim influences, Cheydinhal has Morrowind influences, and the Imperial City has a bit of everything. The melting varies depending on where the towns are located.

Yeah, yeah. Alot of potentially interesting stuff was cut out, but im over that by now, they'll make the next game ever better.


Dont you find it hard to imagine people looking back at Oblivion and saying it had "all that"?

If you can't think of any other attitude then hostile and can't think of any other tension that racial then I pity your imagination. As has been repeated ad nausea Morrowind wasn't good because it was weird, it was good because it had a depth that made the alien world come alive.

And what does it even mean to be not as hostile as a Dunmer? Who isn't?



America is a melting pot because you got African Americans living next to Chinese Americans living next to White Anglo Saksen Protestant Americans to such an extend that it is hard to tell what comes from whom. That you just summed up where every town draws its influence from shows that Cyrodiil is not a melting pot at all.

There is no Imperial culture.

No, hostility and xenophobia are simply the attitudes that were in much more prevalant in Morrowind than Oblivion. You can't expect Imperials in Cyrodiil to be the same as the Dunmer in Morrowind. From what I've seen, they tend to be more open than Dunmer.


Most towns have some of every race, but not unlike America, different regions have different racial populations.

And there are Imperial cultures, they're simply a bit harder to recognize given the differences in the towns. But it's there.

Well, where?

I agree on the point that there is no Imperial culture - just as there is no American culture. It's not for the reason that Cyrodiil or America aren't cultural, but because the cultures that make them up have merged to such and extent that ties to their ancient identities have been lost and that their current identity (or perceived identity) is all that exists. "Culture without a culture", et cetera.

However, I'd like to stress that there is Cyrodic culture - "Cyrodic" in the sense of ancient Cyrod as opposed to modern Cyrodiil. That's where the melting pot began, though - the Cyro-Nords coming in from the North and allying with the native Nedic people. Those civilisations were very distinct and vibrant in culture, but have since merged to become the homogenous "Cyrodiilic" culture that exists today.

I agree, other than that, the portrayal of the Planes of Oblivion as your typical fire and brimstone hell kind of bothered me. I mean, since it might be assumed that it is the sphere of Mehruns Dagon, given that he is the one behind the invasion, it makes sense that it would be something with a theme of destruction, but this Bethesda really have to make it so cliche? The problems with Oblivion's lore do stretch further than the outward appearance of things, if I don't like the way things look on the surface, I usually don't want to bother looking deeper. If I decide to read up on a certain part of the lore, it's usually because the surface catches my eye. So, if one wants to create interesting lore, it must have an interesting outward appearance.



This actually is a worthy point, though. But that doesn't mean Bethesda couldn't have had a detailed backstory on the item in question provided in the form of an optional topic you can discuss after receiving the quest.



That was probably just because Bethesda didn't want to have a book that goes into somewhat explicit detail on six involving six with a fictional cat person to give those who are always complaining about video games "corrupting our youth" fuel for their arguments, rather than any interest in carrying over the lore from previous games. Granted, I've seen far more explicit things than that passage before, but still, can you imagine the claims people might make if it was in the game?



On the other hand, that was rather unrealistic if you think about it. How often have you bumped into a complete stranger on the street and gotten into an in-depth discussion on history or religion? Maybe you'd exchange gossip, talk about the whether, maybe they'd give you a basic introduction, but talking to you about the local cults or giving you a detailed description of what people of their trade do, even if it's something that's completely obvious doesn't seem to make much sense.

Granted, the NPCs didn't offer in-depth discussions on anything, most of what NPCs told you was shallow and generic, and whenever an NPC told you something that might have been worth hearing, you'd probably have heard the exact line from someone else's mouth, ultimately, I never mourned the loss of those topics because aside from important NPCs, no one had anything interesting or useful to say, generally, it was the LGNPC mods that fixed that, but I am fairly certain we are talking about the games as they were when released, not how they can be with mods, as if it's the latter, Oblivion could have everything Morrowind did, and Morrowind could turn out to be a world filled with guns and Predators and night elves and everything else someone can conceive that does not fit the Elder Scrolls lore at all. It was from books, and to a lesser extent, quests that you were able to experience the lore in Morrowind.



That's a problem with game design rather than lore, the lore and backstory about Morrowind gives information on the culture, you can see influences of the culture in the building styles and religion, the problem is that due to the lack of passable AI and bad dialog system, the culture was rarely apparent unless you did a bit of research on the books, which is where the real lore is to be found. It is not that Bethesda did not think about the cultures of Morrowind, Bethesda just didn't do much to apply it in actual gameplay. Something Oblivion doesn't do that much of either, when you get down to it.



Actually, Oblivion had multiple architectural styles too, if you went to Anvil, you might see that the buildings look quite different from those in say... Skingrad, however, ultimately, the styles were still not half as interesting as those in Morrowind, and Bethesda certainly did not go through much effort to actually provide any lore on them, beyond stating that the styles of Bruma and Cheydinhal are influenced by Nord and Dunmer architecture, the first one I can believe, and the latter might be explained by saying that it's influenced by a style from some part of Morrowind other than Vvardenfell, but still, if I weren't told it, I'd never think that there was any relation.



Not in terms of its abundance of lore, but in other ways, depending on which direction Bethesda decides to take future games in, I could potentially see people finding other things in Oblivion that they found lacking in future games.

Fast food, rock music, baseball, sit-coms, big == status, Wall Mart, religious christian patriotism, westerns, gun-nuts, Hollywood, 24/7, free market capitalism.

Wouldn't have those things if weren't for you lot.

Then again, it could simply be that American culture has become so ubiquitous that we don't even think of it as culture anymore...

Its a perspective thing. We cant pin down what makes American or Euroepan culture because were right in it. Ask an Arab, an African or a Chinese, and they might give you better answers.

Thing is that when you are paying 'stars' loads of monies they ought to learn about the thing they are getting into. Wonder woman did, but the new lot did not. And near to the release date there was little or no time to change that.

When it came to the pressure to release and trying to correct stuff it was too late and the folks that finally decided that were the money boys and the liaisons with XBox etc ...

Oblivion was about the graphics maaan. A fair bit of the combat system survived. The people who decided to ream the stealth and such did so because they did not understand the structure of the game - fighter rogue mage. Mage survived because it loads of flashy special effects - yeah them XBOX kiddies will love the colors maaan.

Lore? The fundamental on which the ES series has gone forewards? That is tooo much for money boys, who think money is the only game worth playing, to swallow. Look in the shops and you will see that PC/DVD is dying - except for the online games and even they are short on new titles. I suspect that Vista had a lot to do with it. You cannot sustain a PC games market on high-end product alone. A lot of the buyers were people with old computers. They were those who stayed with gaming previously and bough lots of games. The new market ran away from that and many new buyers will buy a few and then try a new sport or go to the pub instead, whatever they do not really care about rpg and open-world. Sure if the new MS OP is less processing intensive PC might make a comeback - but it is hard to persuade the money boys to invest when they see online games taking in $19 a month and their product would only take in $40 or so once ...

It was possible to put more Lore into Shivering Isles because the big money boys had been sated by that time. They made their nut and did not mind if others added to it because their long and short term objectives had been achieved = the beginning of the end of open-world gaming.

Chorrol, Skingrad, and Anvil show Colovian culture; the people tend to be more rugged than the Nibenese. As the Countess of Chorrol put it (or something to this degree), they are tough mountain folk. Skingrad has not only goblin hunting but has several trainers, most of which help make the city's famous wines. Anvil is less pronounced because of the Hammerfell influences, but there is still some hunting and it also has a very significant Fighters Guild chapter. Nibenese aren't as "rugged", they're considered "slick" by the Colovians (and likewise, the Nibenese consider the Colovians to be hard-headed). Nibenay houses a large non-Imperial population, but it helps to show the Nibenese culture, at least compared to the other races. In Bruma and Cheydinhal, it is shown that they are much more chapel-going than the Dunmer or Nords, and at least one Nord has described them as "snooty". The Nibenese are also a lot more respectful of the law, and thus butt heads with the Khajiit and Argonians in Leyawiin.

But as Susano said, culture is relative.

In themselves, the Colovian and Nibenese ways are not very different, but each town is a bit different, and Cyrodiil has had much more unity than Morrowind, where different groups have been warring with each other for power for millenia.

But that was a point against "Cyrodiil is supposed to have no culture"! We do see it from outside, so we SHOULD see culture and colovian-nibenese differences!

It's still culture, but the contrast between Colvian and Nibenese cultures would have decreased over all these years of unity in Cyrodiil. And there are plenty of other cultures to compare them to.

Youire shifting your argument. Its really only "OB cant be wrong" with you, isnt it?

So far Cyrodiil's culture stems from a few dozen building .nifs and Rumors.

To the degree of:

"Colovians are apes."
"Nibeneans are ninnies."

I wish I had heard about this talked about in the game. That way, I could've been convinced that the people in Anvil knew that Cheydinhall existed.

No, I'm not shifting my arguement. I'm merely pointing out that actual differences between the Colovians and Nibenese doesn't lessen their "culture". The "culture" is evident in the cultural clashing between the Nibenese and the Dunmer, Nords, Khajiit, and Argonians. The Colovians themselves don't have as much of this cultural clashing, but they have distinguishing characteristics that show the differences between them and the Nibenese.

And the opposing arguement looks suspiciously like "OB can't be right".

Lets not go there