I recently purchased Fable (I'm not much of a gamer) and I noticed the most interesting building in Albion: an Arena.

Dear gamers, how much of the world of TES is actually original in the sense that it contains something other games do not?

I played MW and OB, but I found out about the Drow later and then the Dunmer were not so original anymore.

You, who have played many other (fantasy) games, how does it measure up?

TES contains a lot of real-world and fantasy elements. However, TES handles them differently from the norm. Dunmer are nothing like the Drow, for example.

I felt that Vvardenfell was really unique.

Cyrodiil wasn't very original at all.

As for Arenas - the Romans had them, and the one-on-one fighting shtick is prevalent in many 'sports' (wrestling, boxing, martial arts) as well as in video games (fighting/beat-'em-up games, boss-fights, etc).

Yes arena tipped over to the roman colosseum real world, and oblivion was quite alike to the generic medieval-fantasy world, but morrowind, that was completely unique, a truly alien world. Not sure about Redguard, Battlespire and Daggerfall though.

TES also borrows many fantasy elements, e.g. magic, imps, minotaurs, dragons, orcs, and loads more, what makes it generic though is the way these things are implemented and used.

To be honest, I think just about all of Morrowind and Dunmeri culture (lore, architecture, etc.) is pretty unique. I've never seen anything else like it.

Edit: I think the problem with Oblivion, and to a lesser extent Daggerfall, is that they went for the medieval feel, which has been done to death and back and death again. It's just hard to make a medieval setting feel unique in my opinion.

In my opinion, Beth created a very unique universe. Sure, you get your elves and orcs and wolves and what not, but the way it is treated is very unique. Just look at the dwarves, they could by a painful clish?, but they are not, since Beth made them really unique, also what they did with spells (the fact that you can build your own spells) was wery uniqe for me and so far I have not seen another game to do this. Morrowind gave me the same sort of feeling with layered clothing, which, IMO was a brilliant idea and so on.

But the true uniqueness lies in the lore. I think the devs have spent a lot of time on that and that is always good. Just a shame the lore does not play grater role in the game and also the contradictions are annoying, but what we have is pretty unique.

The wayshrines can actually be seen somewhere in the real world although not sure where exactly.

Most of the races in TES have their generic fantasy equivalents, but TES does them very very differently from the norm. Almost opposite in many cases (Altmer are often unstable villains while traditional "High Elves" are benign).

And the lore concerning daedra and aedra and the nature of the world, feels extremely novel.

Even though they borrowed a lot from Afghani culture for the Dunmer, I feel this is enough of an untapped real world example that it makes them completely unique in the gaming world. It's almost as unique as Frank Herbert's Dune in my opinion, who also borrowed ideas heavily from arab culture, particularly for the Fremen. The Dunmer != Drow at all. However the Imperial Empire's occupation of Morrowind does correspond to the Russian occupation of Afghanistan in the 70s and 80s very neatly.

The only thing missing is a reference to Buzkashi. How about a game of Guarzashi?

Edit: Just to make it clear, Afghanistan is not really arabic, though they are muslim. They actually trace their lineage to the mongolians, making their culture pretty unique in the world. This is why their old tribal leaders called themselves the Khans, because they ALL trace their lineage directly to Ghengis Khan (whether it's actually true or not doesn't matter). Khans == Ashkhans.

There's nothing wrong at all with borrowing ideas from real cultures and history, such as the Roman arenas as previously mentioned. I think that taking something from a real culture is far less derivative than taking from another fictional work. In fact, I think it adds more depth if it enhances the feeling that you are dealing with a real culture in the game.

I just finished a 2 semester course on the European Civilization & History & You'd laugh out loud if you saw the notes I took during the chapters on the early Roman Republic & it's growth into the overstretched empire. (Seriously, my notes look like the Pocket Guide to the Empire )
As a quick example, note the name of the river on the map.
http://keep2.sjfc.edu/class/bnapoli/msti431/jpk7984/msti431/oldromemap.jpg
SEPTIMiana?

....GOD I loved that class

I want to see them , any pictures anyone?

They say no idea is original. They've simply made slight alterations to existing cultures and concepts, or they've radically altered them and hoped for the best. This is theorised to be how all creativity works. So even if something seems completely new and unique, it's just a very well thought-out idea that borrows well from previous ideas to make something apparently new.

The Elder Scrolls, like most high fantasy games (including Fable) takes a lot from both actual history and culture, real mythologies (real in the sense that they are the mythologies of real civilizations.) most of the races for example don't look particularly original if you look down at their basis. The humans, of course, are all inspired by real life cultures and races, and the different types of elves are similar to certain elves that are common in other fantasy settings. The Khajiit and Argonians are based on a concept that often seems to come up when a work of speculative fiction, such as if a fantasy setting wants something different from the usual http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FiveRaces, or a science-fiction setting where http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RubberForeheadAliens aren't different enough from humans but the designers lack the creativity to come up with good http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens (or alternately, they want the aliens to be major characters and they feel that it would be too hard for audiences to relate to completely alien lifeforms.) thus the concept is to take some animal of the creator's choice, some sort of feline or reptile being a popular choice, and make an anthropomorphic version, they walk on two legs, have two arms, speak human languages, but at the same time no one will actually confuse them for humans. So the races of the Elder Scrolls aren't exactly unique, but at the same time, Bethesda has tried to put a unique spin on them. Now, Khajiit and Argonians they can succeed in making pretty creative, and humans, as unlikely as it seems that a world with no connection to the real world would produce lifeforms that seem physically identical to real humans, have a justifiable reason to be in the world because they offer something that players can easily identify with, even orcs can be made relatively unique simply by the fact that orcs are rarely portrayed in games as being anything beyond always chaotic evil, but elves I think are beyond saving. The rest of the Elder Scrolls world is also filled with generic fantasy ideas that Bethesda tries to make less generic, how successful this is depends on the exact item in question. But I'd say that as a whole, the Elder Scrolls is more unique than most high fantasy games, but this says about as much as calling a movie better than Plan 9 From Outer Space.



I wouldn't call it COMPLETELY unique, it had lots of creative ideas, certainly, but at the same time, it's not like Bethesda built it all from scratch. The Dunmeri culture pulls a lot from real world cultures, just cultures that are less commonly used in fantasy settings than Medieval Europe (or at least its theme park version.), the expansions brought in more unoriginal content by introducing goblins (in Tribunal) and various real animals, werewolves, and aspects of Nordic lore (in Bloodmoon.) And of course, adding giant mushrooms unto an otherwise fairly normal looking landscape doesn't make it completely unique. Regardless, Morrowind was pretty unique as far as high fantasy goes.

The Imperials were based on the Romans, Bretons on the French, Nords on Scadinavians, and Redguards on those of African descent.

Not really in the case of the Redguards. Their actual culture more resembles persian and other oriental influences.

That is true, but their facial features are based on African features.

Yes, TES uses the typical RPG aspects such as orcs, dragons and a Medieval setting, but the amount of lore and reasons for them being there makes the game completely unique.

Can I just say that this isn't a medieval setting - we can't decide when it's set if we don't know where. The technology level is sort of medieval, but what about the Imperial airships?

Not completely original, but, then, neither was Tolkien. The cultures and history of the races in the game are similar to many in real-life, but there's a lot that Bethesda has created to give it more realism.



Bretons on the Bretons, actually. They just have French names, but their culture is similar to that of Breizh. Most races are based on more than one culture, however. I've worked out most of them, but I don't know how many of them were intended by Bethesda:

Dunmer - Assyrians, Hazaras (I assume that was what was meant when someone said 'Afghans'), Gaels (Highland), Native Americans
Nords - Norse, Gaels (Irish)
Imperials - Romans
Khajiit - African tribes
Orcs - Mongols
Bretons - Bretons, French, English
Altmer - Japanese
Bosmer - I don't know, possibly the stereotype of the druids.
Argonians - Amazonian tribes
Redguards - African tribes, Persians, Pacific Islanders

I know. They are somehow related to the celts and aren't entirely French, but the Bretons are(for a simpler way of explaining on these forums) based on the French.

Celts aren't one race, you won't hit the mark if you want something that's based on them

But, as far as I can see, only the Breton names are French (some of them are also English - and about three of them sound Breton, although they're not). Their bardic, tribal society is definitely Breton, and the way these tribes and clans act as independent feudal kingdoms is also Breton. The province of High Rock is almost exactly like Breizh, with its shape, mountains, and islands. It's also on the northwest coast of Tamriel, just as http://z.about.com/d/goeurope/1/0/r/s/1/brittany-rail-map.png is on the northwest coast of France.

This.
Fantasy as a genre doesn't tend to be amazingly original. It does have a different take on fantasy that is quite distinct from say a D&D-based game.

Fantasy always borrows from other fantasy.

The feel of the TES world is original, the mythical creatures don't really have to be.

And this is exactly what bothers me about fantasy. As far as fictional genres go, fantasy should have the most potential for originality of all. Because it doesn't have to portray the real world or be bound by its rules, sure, some fantasy stories do take place on Earth, but even those get room for making their own things up, and a lot of fantasy takes place in a world that is not real, giving the writers freedom to do their own thing. Now, you could argue that science-fiction also offers a lot of such freedom, and despite it's name, it's not like it has to be bound by real world science. But generally, science-fiction tries to convince audiences that it's about things that could happen in the future and/or some distant part of the universe. Thus, while science-fiction might give us technology that isn't possible with modern science, possibly with some sort of techno-babble explanation, it's generally not going to consciously rewrite the very structure of the universe, yet fantasy has this freedom, and some settings take it. So why is it that science-fiction authors can create worlds that truly feel alien, but fantasy authors rarely succeed in doing so? This annoys me to great ends.



The very fact that the mythical creatures aren't original prevents it from feeling original, considering that you actually see them regularly, and thus they have a major effect on the feel of the world, the whole messed up cosmology on the other hand which is fairly unique is (and despite all I have been saying about originality, in this case, I must say, thankfully.) something you rarely here about unless you obsessively read every bit of lore in the series.

I disagree there, i've never played a game that felt like the TES. I'm talking about the 'feel' of the game that is very different to other games. Sure there are zombies in plenty of modern games but they aren't anything alike.

And that is the feeling that I don't get. Morrowind did feel pretty unique, and just the fact that races that are usually evil in games (orcs, lizard people and dark elves, mainly.) are not only normal, non-evil characters but also playable races is a big plus for the series, but when playing Oblivion or Daggerfall, the world still feels a lot like most fantasy games. Morrowind was sort of the odd one out in this regard, making a dramatic departure from the usual fantasy settings.

At least the dwarves were all kind enough to disappear, though, it at least spares me the need to deal with them.