Eh, dragon's are basically the combination of everything humans are scared of. Its an amored lizard while human's are rather squishy, they got claws while we got our fingers, its got sharp teeth while we don't got anything close to what they got, it can fly while we're stuck on the ground(back before airplanes anyway), they're just as smart as us or even smarter(smart bad guys are scary bad guys), and most of them breath fire.

Its hard to add more onto that. Pretty much every fear humans have in their subconsious due to the animals that were a threat to us way back when, all in one nice package called a dragon. That's why many reasurchers think many cultures came up with dragons at the same time, dispite the atlantic ocean still splitting things down the middle. Not much more you can add, without them getting furry and spitting webbing as well as fire. So ya, they're going to be a little cliche but if they can do all that we've been told it won't matter to much to me.

lumping all the 8 humanoid races in together, considering what we know about humanity from real medieval history, Dragons would have almost certainly been hunted to death, therefore its absolutely right they are bad in this game. They are intelligent and would know that man is bad for them.

Well their leader Alduin isn't really "evil".

I would way rather Dragons be evil then good. I hate books/movies were the dragons are good

doesn't he eat worlds? I suppose the word 'evil' is open to interpretation, but he's certainly no pacifist.

Selbeth_the_Winged_One, I enjoyed your comments. You gave a lot of thought to your reply and got me to wondering if Bethesda will break this cliche and have 1 or 2 dragons be your Allies in some sense? Todd Howard pretty much poo-poo-ed on the idea of being able to ride a dragon at this point (at least until the dragon-riding Mods start appearing which I know they will), but still I never though at all that they might throw in a few dragon Allies until just now. That would make for some interesting scenarios with your allies defending you against even greater threats you're not dragon-enabled enough to deal with yet.

One thing I never thought about which also comes to mind is, does anyone know if the question has been awswered whther or not Skrim's Engine tech offers the ability to have fully outdoor cities without having to load? I would think dragons, if they attacked, would have to have a clear path from the sky to the cities streets below. So I'm assuming (but not sure) the open-sky technology will be in, or else how could that work?

I was playing Nehrim for about 20 hours when suddenly I remembered Oblivion didn't have open cities ... and I just felt my jaw drop on the ground, because once I remembered the crazy loading screens at every gate and how you couldn't see over the walls, I wondered how in the world I ever could have missed that awesome upgrade in Nehrim! But I guess when something is just natural, the way it's SUPPOSED to be, you can't see it. You only see it when it's UNnatural, as it was in Oblivion, having to load to go into the cities, that was down-right aggravating.

"Oh, no! The dragons are coming to burn our cities to the ground! Now all you have to do is sit still for 30-40 seconds in Pause mode while the game loads them in!" Like THAT wouldn't ruin immersion! hahahaha

All dragons are cliche, good, neutral or evil, inteligent or animal-like, up to this time elder scrolls avoided this topos by simply not showing them(Redguard and Oblivion ending being exceptions) and keeping lore about them relatievly small, we'll see how it will be handled in skyrim.

I think all dragons are fantasy cliché no matter what you do, but so long as they handle them subtly, and to a good standard, I'll be happy. I think I heard in the podcast that Todd and the team didn't want to make them the main direction of the game, which brings the danger that, with spending less time on them, they won't be as well done as they could be. It's already clear that bethesda are going to put their own stamp on their dragons- dragon shouts. And if they are sure that they are a worthwhile contribution to the game, whether they are cliché or not really doesn't matter to me.

I'm hating the idea of a "good intelligent deep easily hurt feelings" dragon in Skyrim. Good dragons bore the heck out of me especially http://www.wowwiki.com/Alexstrasza "i'm not wearing anything! Be on my side!" :dry:.

I prefer "destructive" to "evil" in this context, and possibly in the TES setting in general.

Dragons in general tend to be cliché, like nearly all of the really cool things in fantasy. Or is it still fashionable for originality to be more important than fun? If dragons in fantasy aren't cool any more, either there's something wrong with the dragons or there's something wrong with you (growing up too much is a common cause and failing).

Anyway, my favourite sort of dragon is the Smaug variety. Big, dark-scaled, serpentine, fire-breathing bastards who'll best all but the mightiest heroes at arms, mind and magic alike, all the while laughing in the face of the morality that lesser beings hold up like a shield.

They have there own agenda g vs e is the only cliche here...

Euhrrrr... Shrek is not from Disney.

Anyway, dragons that want to destroy the world to finish the cycle of time being cliché? I don't think so...

I agree.

Dragons do not have to be good or evil. They can be neither. Take the movie Dragonslayer for an example. The dragon that must be slain, Vermathrax Pejorative, is painted as evil. She terrorized the people of Urland and she's pacified by virgin sacrifices. In reality, though, that's all just from the perspective of the humans. If you stand back you see a very old dragon with children she needs to feed. She simply is trying to survive. What she needs is just at odds with the humans. If anyone was evil it was the king.

Conflict is not always so simple as Good and Evil, Black and White. Sometimes conflict is just the result when the needs of two groups do not coincide. That is what I want to see from the dragons in Skyrim.

And if Alduin is Akatosh (that is likely) he saved it as well. I think that they want to destroy the world because mortals are stupid and are killing each other. They want to finish the world to finish the blood spilt. That's more than simply "evil dragons".

I updated my OP to include Halfblood Chronicles, Dragon Age and Dragonlance, didn′t change much however since both sides just got a + 2.

I′d like to point out BTW to those saying "Dragons are just destructive by nature, they are not evil" that Dragons in most fantasy including TES are supposed to be intelligent, even more intelligent than the humanoid races, saying that it′s in their nature is the same as saying that humans are destructive by nature and not evil, but there are good and bad humans.

Anything that can think on the same level of humans, heck even on the same level of certain breeds of apes, dolphins and elephants. Can choose between being bad or good.

Not unintelligent, but agressive "animals".

Oh, they're so cliche it hurts. /sarcasm

Honestly, why is it cliche to have dragons? They shouldn't be treated like some forbidden fruit, that's just dismissed as a cop-out. I'm willing to bet that Skyrim's story line is anything but cliche. Really, if you think that they're cliche then perhaps you should be elsewhere, looking for more "original" games, because so many of today's games have never been done a hundred times over. The only thing that's cliche are these threads.

In my case, I was pointing out the subjectivity of the terms. Look at Skyrim's likely civil war - are the Nords who support the Empire good, and the Nords who don't, evil? Or vice versa? I realise "good" and "evil" are convenient terms to use in heroic fantasy, but there's nothing in the Elder Scrolls setting that suggests they're in any way objective concepts, so one man's evil dragon is another man's good dragon. And likewise among provinces, factions, species...

'Dragons who help the player' and 'dragons who oppose him' just seems like a more accurate way to differentiate between them. Possibly doesn't add much to the discussion though, so apologies for wandering off-topic (and possibly into controversial opinion territory).

Personally I hope the great majority of dragons are vain, greedy, destructive horrors, but I wouldn't consider a more compassionate or helpful dragon to be cliché, and it wouldn't make me think less of Bethesda's dragons in general.

If they can′t form the line of thought "Hey, maybe doing bad stuff isn′t so nice" because they are too much of an aggressive "animal" then they are not intelligent. If there is a reason for them being unreasonably aggressive someone needs to tell me how and why, and if they would be as "evil" or "good" if not for the particular reason.



That is a good point, and I′ve already given TES dragons points as being both good and evil, since there is a question about it. After all one of the things I want this post to achieve is to dispell this whole "omg Bethesda don′t make dragons evil cliché" by pointing out that dragons aren′t always evil so it′s not a cliché even if they made them evil, if they are neither good nor bad then forum goers have nothing to complain about after all.

Not any more cliché than being able to shoot fireballs from your hands.
:tongue:

Because they're a standard fantasy trope.


However, that does not in any way mean it's bad. A cliche is not necessarily bad, as long as it works. It's true that dragons in fantasy have lost their original meaning/effect, and is no longer a novel concept. That doesn't mean, though, that they still can't be done well.

Maybe evil dragons is cliche, but what isn't cliche is Bethesda spending 2 years developing the tech to empower the dragons in this game to be more alive and lifelike than any other game before it. Cliche implies something that is done so often it no longer make sense as it was originally introduced, but takes on a whole new meaning. Yes, dragons are done quite often in video games, but only because they terrifying beasts whose fiersome power make them a constant draw to artists and game designers (not to mention movie producers, eh Peter Jackson?) But the cool thing here is that, according to the Podcast interview, their was a team that has been working on nothing else but dragons for two years. What other game can boast so much effort? I hope the effort has truly yielded the results Todd claims in the interview, because we'd be looking at something entirely new. A dragon in a video game that didn't look like a bunch of boxes thrown together that moved like a robot.

Can anyone vouche for the dragons in Dragon Age? I got bored with that game after 2 hours and returned it. And can't remember if I ever saw a dragon during that time. If I did, it wasn't memorable.

Erm, did you ever play AD&D? There was a full spectrum of good and evil dragons.

Also, according to "How to Train a Dragon", dragons are really just another kind of animal, a part of nature, to which evil really can't be attributed.

So in conclusion, I've presented evidence that, indeed, dragons are not all evil, not all hungry, and not all about destruction. Indeed, they are really not at all

Of course, on Supernatural last night, they saved the special effects budget (like most sci-fi nowdays) and just used dragons in human form....who were evil....but were able to melt steel with their bare hands!

edit:
OP, you missed Baldur's Gates, At least 3 there, 2 evil 1 good

Completely agree. Todd's comments about the dragons' development really raised my hopes as well; dragons would be insanely dangerous considering the abilities most settings give them, and I'm expecting a really dynamic, dangerous encounter with a real sense of size and power in Skyrim. Rather than, well...



Wasn't impressed by Dragon Age's dragon battles at all; they look impressive initially, but it rapidly turns into the party just hurling damage into it and the dragon flailing about clumsily, with no sense of cunning, danger or impact as it goes through one animation to the next. That probably describes DA style combat more than just the dragons specifically - anyway, here's a http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aW-hLakZSpY of how not to do dragon battles in Skyrim.