YES. This lol. They have at their disposal complete creative freedom to create another world, and they have done so beautifully to date. Why they should have to make it feel so much like contemporary (if ancient) Earth never made sense to me. I know, I know, mass appeal... but surely there's a way to marry the two. Morrowind was hardly a commercial flop, after all.

I don't think imagining Cryodiil being the most Earth like place in all of Nirn is a bad thing. And it is possible, Morrowind isn't the most alien looking place either. Dun dun dun dun..

I don't think it was a "bad" thing, either. And that's what I'm hoping lol.

I dunno. I don't want a game world that's nothing but a bunch of weird tree-pants and fugly things. I actually like traveling through and honest-to-god medieval wilderness. That's not to say, however, that I wouldn't want some strange and unusual section of the world that makes me go "whoa". But, I'd also like to get back to something normal enough that I can go back to suspending disbelief a little bit.

Suspension of disbelief is harder for me when a game feels too contemporary.

I'm (admittedly) a very odd person, though lol.

I've always thought of Nirn as a mixture between Earth and an alien world, and Skyrim could potentially be a great place to mix the two together. I just hope Bethesda doesn't pull another lazy move and make the game with a big fat GENERIC stamped on it.

You know, I recall when I played the Shivering Isles, and when I took a good look at one of those giant venus-flytrap-like things, I suddenly thought "What if that thing suddenly springs up and swallows me whole?" Sheogorath's doing his job pretty well, I guess. Bethesda, too, since they made the expansion. Either way, they've proven that they're not stuck to making the rest of the TES series like Oblivion.

In a direct quote of Dr Breen from Half Life 2 - "...Let us not slide back into the darkest pits of oblivion, just when we have finally begun to see the light."

If you have the complete elder scrolls iv game meaning goty then not only do you get the magnificent high fantasy world of cyrodiil you also get the otherwordly setting of the isles so it really is the complete package...

Wow. Did you seriously just say that? :shakehead:

EDIT: And in case someone says "Well Morrowind broke past lore in terms of geography!" Yes, it did. But they at least kept it Morrowind-ish. And the change was necessary for Morrowind's plot. Oblivion has no such justification.

Some people just don't like lore I guess.

Edit: I think that the only way for skyrim to have an alien world feel is if they do a lot of mountain top traveling with underground ruins filled with ancient horrors.

Eh, I wouldn't say that's the ONLY way. I mean, think about Morrowind. Before it came out all we knew is it was barren and ashy and there was a volcano. That doesn't sound a whole lot more interesting or alien than snow and mountains does it?

The snow and mountains are just the base setting. The set lore isn't so specific that it handcuffs the creative team, they certainly have the room to create all sorts of interesting cultural, religious, and biological details. Let's just hope they do.

That said, mountain top travelling and undeground ruins sound pretty cool. How about a hollowed out mountain? An entire ancient city in a giant open space within a mountain? That sounds pretty damn awesome. It could be a warm haven in the coldest part of tamriel. Explain it with magic or creatures or magical creatures or the best answer: "No one really knows what made the mountain hollow, perhaps it is a trick of the (d)aedra..."

MK wrote lore to make Cyrodiil correct lore wise, so it's ok.

What?

Mike Kirkbride wrote Cyrodiil out of a jungle and into temperate forest using the power of deus ex.

So Cyrodiil was once jungle, but the people supposedly hated it so they asked a god to change it. That god got rid of the jungle, and lo, the people rejoiced.

In other words, they had to pull something out of their (censored) and put it out there.

Most awful justification possible for going against lore, imo.

A god did it. :rolleyes:

It's deeper than that though. This isn't lore for any generic fantasy. It's lore for TES, which means it's all up in the air and open to speculation.

Maybe a god did change it. Maybe it's never been any different, but a handful of religious scholars changed history one day by writing that Cyrodiil used to be rainforest and jungle until a god changed it to suit man's desires. Therefore, we should all worship the gods, because they have shown their love for us with the metamorphosis of Cyrodiil into a more hospitable climate!

I'm of the belief that the 'lore' about the planets being flat planes and gods is also created by man's fancy, as a tale to captivate people's interests in the gods and exaggerate their scale. As a result I believe Tamriel is bound to geographical laws, of which Cyrodiil is bound to appear as a temperate climate. Snow to the north and desert to the south. Just because they say 'a god did it' doesn't mean that's what happened with TES games. You can believe that if you want, but it's very open to debate. And that's why I love this series!

Yep, this topic is officially hijacked and is now about lore consistency.

Sorry man, you're right. Didn't notice how far off course we were going

I think the basic gist of the tangent is that Skyrim has every chance of being as alien and unpredictable a climate as Morrowind presented, but that we should always keep in mind how much Bethesda like to shake up the lore when they focus on a new province. So although we can look at current lore to make predictions on how 'alien' Skyrim might be, we can't predict how much or how little of it will be changed with the release of TES:V.

:hugs:

I would think that it would be hard to create alien plant life in Skyrim. I can't imagine rock and snow to be healthy for exotic plants.

On the other hand: They could get creative with the animals. I know in Morrowind everyone hated cliffracers but perhaps in Skyrim there would be cliffracers with a coat of fur to protect against cold. But also make it that they're only found around the Morrowind border.

I remember reading an in-game book in Oblivion about Skyrim's vampires and how they would sleep for decades below the frozen lakes and wait for a traveler to cross the lake in the dead of winter. The vampire would awake and crash through the ice and pull the victim under water and feed off of him and return to a slumber.

Now I know vampires and cliffracers aren't new creatures to the series but if they even mixed up old enemies I'd think that would make the game refreshing.

Didn't todd howard say that TESV was focusing more on culture and junk, anyway? If that wasn't my imagination (It often is), hopefully, we have nothing to fear.


Can you imagine an inhospitable lava filled ashy wasteland to be healthy for anything?

In http://www.podcast.tv/video-podcasts/kotaku-blog-talk-radio-feed-209218.html Todd Howard is asked what he would like to bring from Morrowind to the next game which isnt in Oblivion he says, and I quote "A more unique sence of culture". The quote is at 65:00 to 65:30.

I think there really is no more evidence we could possibly need to put our fears at rest about a bland culture in the next TES.#

EDIT: I reworded it.

I like that it was the final caller, too. Seems meant to be or something.

"A more unique sense of culture." I like that he actually acknowledged that it was "something that was missing from Oblivion," too.

GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME, Mr. Howard!

The lore might justify the way Cyrodiil is now, but it doesn't change the fact that it resulted in Cyrodiil being a more boring and generic place then it could have been. And if the designers had respected the original lore to begin with, there would be no need to write new lore to explain the change.



I can't say it really satisfies me, after all, it's easy to say you're going to do something, now actually doing what you say you're going to do is harder. I'll believe said promises when Bethesda shows clear evidence that they're making an effort to build a much more interesting setting for any future Elder Scrolls games. As much as I'd like to think that Bethesda learned their lesson and realized that they had the right idea with making Morrowind a unique setting, it's a bit too early for me to be willing to count on this simply based on a few words.



But that's not what the lore says at all, and fiction should be able to be interesting on its own based on what it tells you. If you need to come up with your own, unfounded, theories about some aspect of a work of fiction to make it interesting, then there's a big problem. And besides, whatever the explanation, it still doesn't change the fact that Cyrodiil would probably have been much more interesting as a jungle than as what we got in Oblivion.

Icy tundra and howling winds. I'd like to see Bethesda attempt to create a setting that actually feels positively malignant towards the player. Like Morrowind's ash & blight storms, but with all the power of modern hardware behind them. So many vast open world environments are incredibly easy to navigate and hop around at light speed. I think exploring a landscape which actually fights against the player, making travelling an experience and challenge in itself, would be a pretty unique scenario. and something entirely alien to what most people experience in day to day life.

Imagine having to slowly trawl through a frozen wasteland, feet dragging through the high snow, barely able to see a few meters ahead through the screaming blizzard your character is entirely ensconced within. From time to time you cross signs of life - glimpses of Arctic wolves through the whirling snow, and, and other, more unmentionable things. Your sense of direction is your primary navigational skill. Eventually, you find and climb a peak of sorts. The storm abates, and you see through your characters chilled breath vast and distant glacial ice walls, glistening in the high sun. The desolate landscape reveals other treasures - abandoned ancient cities, half buried in still snow, the ruins of the old Skyrim forts and temples brought down by the screaming Nord kings of old. Hidden in icy valleys lie small clusters of civilisation; although of what desperate shape and form you can only guess. Your character travels onwards, and cold, bitter night falls across the tundra.

You are on your own, and this land does not welcome you with open arms.

That's the sort of game I want to play.

If that's what he said then I'm down with it. If they just do something more unique and less generalized, then I've a good feeling I'll be happy with it.

Still want varied "zones" and not just the same thing everywhere I go, but I want it to all fit together sensibly. I know they can do it. They did it with TES 2 and 3.